In the latest episode of “In Systems We Trust,” hosted by Marquis Murray, Chloe Handelman joins as a guest. Chloe is an expert in designing custom operations strategies, processes, and systems for overburdened, purpose-driven businesses. She helps CEOs and founders prepare to sell or scale by implementing new operational tactics that save time, earn more money, and reduce stress. Chloe discusses Business Process Improvement, Change Management, Team Management Systems, and Knowledge Management Systems during the interview. Some of her proudest professional accomplishments include helping Ditto to nearly 4x their profits and cut delivery time in half by revamping the delivery process, implementing a training and communications strategy for Ditto from scratch, and implementing an interconnected knowledge management system relating SOPs to roles, departments, workflows, and technology. Tune in to hear Chloe’s insights on improving business operations.

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Welcome back to another episode of In Systems We Trust.

And today I'm speaking with Chloe Handelman.

Chloe helps overburdened, purpose-driven businesses to eradicate operational challenges by designing custom operations strategies, processes, and systems.

Whether preparing to sell or scale, she supports busy CEOs and founders by downloading their company vision and implementing new operational tactics to save time, earn more money, and reduce the stress of running a business.

I know we had to reschedule a couple times, but I feel like it was for the better, because I feel like we've changed and grown, and we have so much more to talk about.

I mean, not that we ever didn't have enough to talk about, but you know, you know how life works.

I mean, for the listeners, to provide some context, Chloe and I used to work together.

She was our senior business analyst at Ditto, the consultancy that I used to run.

And when I met Chloe, I mean, the business was in a completely different place.

Chloe, you started as a business analyst, I guess, working with a couple of our clients.

And we quickly realized that her skills could be used in just other places of the business.

And Chloe led our team of business analysts, was instrumental in rolling out of our new processes and like taking the lead on just like our process improvement overall.

And so I just want to say it loud and clear off the top of this episode that I owe the success of Ditto a lot to the work that Chloe did and led us through.

I know that was like a really like broad overview but like let's start there like what did you do?

With ditto or when I was working with you?

With ditto yeah I mean yeah let's start there and talk about you know where we really started you were working with some clients you know there was a an opportunity obviously within the business to improve how we were working.

You're always like the person that was like calling some of them out.

So let's kind of start there on like how you got that start and where you really took things.

Yeah, I think this is it's really fun that we're bringing us back to where we started when I was on initial client projects because I think this is kind of how my role often evolves within organizations.

I find some companies I work with or talk with and they say that they need 1 thing, right?

And that just kind of opens the door to seeing a lot of things that are challenging the business owners or the team members.

And we even, I think at the first discussions, you and I had already kind of started recognizing there might be some value that I could add directly to the company, not just with the client projects.

But what I think is really fun about the work that I do is like I like getting in and jumping into the actual doing role for periods of time, because unless you're in the doing role and the delivery of work, you don't sometimes see all of the challenges that are getting faced.

So I think, you know, we, the first client that I got thrown on, it was just that big, like big messy client, you know, it got, you know, pulled in all different directions, roles were not clear between our team, and it just kind of shed light on some of the operational challenges.

So then, you know, yes, we were like raising our hands constantly like, all right, like, how can we improve this next time?

How can we improve our internal communication about what's going on?

And that was kind of what spit it's been balled into just, you know, really starting some internal and focusing and having that, you know, bigger attention on focusing on those internal improvement projects, which pretty much is what I transferred into ultimately was that was only working on internal projects for the company.

I mean, I remember that first project, like we were still trying to figure out how we were delivering and like sales were starting to ramp up.

And we had a lot to figure out around delivery.

And so, yeah, this project was, I think it shed a light on a lot of the areas that we needed to focus.

And then it was out of that that we started, you know, these internal, you know, initiatives to improve.

And I even remember going back to your onboarding, right?

Like, I had put out at the point in time, you know, a really robust onboarding program and lots of like, next steps and information and context.

And you were just poking holes at it, right?

Like in a good way, it was like, hey, this doesn't make sense, or this doesn't connect to that.

And then all of a sudden I'm at this place where I'm the CEO and I'm like, this is good.

But at the same time, it's like, oh man, like I thought, you know, we had it together and that just launched a whole other initiative around improving how we onboarded our team members.

Yeah, and I think that's the fun in the challenge and the dance that I'm always evolving in my ability to communicate with the CEOs or the founders or the team members because it's your baby, right?

I don't want to be calling your baby ugly, but the top and the shorts don't match, right?

It's consulting is like an art and a science right and that's that's the art of it right how can I deliver and I know there's probably times that I said things that you probably got off the call and you're like oh my god Chloe stop right like too much you're saying too many problems But I think that sometimes is the big realization point and you have to kind of throw that mirror up?

And as an ops consultant, it can be challenging when you go into a company and they're like, oh, well, we don't have internal budget for ops or we don't have the space and time.

And I'm like, yeah, but look at all this.

We do need to put some effort towards it and being able to communicate that and find those slivers of budget and time and resource capacity to actually focus on those pieces, that's where it's, yeah, fun and challenging.

And That was 1 of our problems too, right?

Like not being able to find that budget because we had, you know, our team was growing quickly and they're dedicated to client projects and we didn't have the internal budget in a lot of cases to involve the necessary team members in those process improvement engagements.

And then there was the training and adoption aspect of it as well that we had to like find, you know, budget for so that we can fully align the team.

So, so many challenges, but let's get down to the core of it.

I want to know if we can back up a little bit.

Just like, how did you get your start in this world, Chloe?

And what inspired you to pursue business process improvement for organizations and CEOs?

Well, my start in the world happened when my mom gave birth to me.

But no, as soon as you asked, I was like, oh, I'm going to make a joke.

No, but My background actually is in industrial and systems engineering.

So if a lot of people aren't actually familiar what that means, even I think I call the degree technically the wrong degree sometimes.

It's a complicated title, but ultimately industrial engineers focus on creating efficiencies in business, in industry, in engineering, like in so many different factors.

And every time I had a work experience during my studies, I, in my internships, I did cooperative educations, I took a semester off and just worked the whole time.

Everything I was doing was being the intermediary between engineering or a technical field and business people.

From there, I really recognize that there are, you know, often so many cross departmental system challenges that there just needs to be someone who can look at everything and have a holistic understanding and help the players communicate to 1 another and understand how things are interconnected.

And that interested me and I found that I was good at it.

I was able to really have that ability to communicate to the different stakeholders at different levels and understand how their role played into the bigger part.

And so fast forward, I started working at Accenture.

I was in consulting, looking at same thing.

There's always in projects where I was doing process improvement, I was mapping workflows, I was implementing change management, they're considering the implications of big tech changes and the change management that needed to go alongside of it.

And again, I've just like always been super interested in how can I make people's lives easier?

Because ultimately at the end of the day, you go in and you sit with these people and these companies and there's these business challenges, but then you sit at the desk next to someone and they're frustrated, they're upset, they're working long hours.

There was this woman working for an insurance company who would come in at like 3 in the morning because the system was broken.

And if she didn't come in at 3 in the morning, it would send the wrong thing.

So she would have to just go in and sit down at 3am to stop the auto send of this, I can't remember what it was.

But those are the people, you know, those are...

That's what I found so much interest in, right?

Is the people who are running these businesses and how their lives are impacted by poor systems, by poor training, by poor communication, poor process, lack of documentation, how people's lives are actually impacted by that.

And that's really where my interest began.

And it's obviously, it's definitely involved into who I'm now working with today.

That's a whole other train of thought of where that I've been now evolved into that.

But that is from like a technical and like a truly skill set wise.

How I kind of got here is through that interest and making people's lives better through processes and systems.

Super interesting, because it always comes down to the people, right?

And how they're impacted in the day to day.

And a lot of my conversations as of late have been around how the people within our systems we create are impacted.

So does it ever become overwhelming for you?

I mean, you're not only taking on the business problems and then needing to strategize ways to improve, but you're also taking on the weight of how these people are impacted and like what they're taking home potentially and how their lives really look at the end of the day.

And then how do you compartmentalize and figure out next steps?

I think a big challenge can be, you know, when taking it, like taking it so personally.

I think that's where I get overwhelmed where you know I'm doing my best you know I'm coming up with the system I'm working really hard and things start to kind of maybe maybe there's a challenge right with the with the founder people in the company and they're not showing up or they have a change in priorities or they're not showing up.

And I, and, or if a solution just, we build it out and then again, the requirements change and then the solution I built isn't working and it's like, wait, that's not, that's, it's not my fault, You know, like, and it is, I have responsibility, but like, there's so many factors at play.

So in those moments, I definitely get overwhelmed because I really, the last thing I want to do is fail.

I don't want to screw up someone's company.

I don't want to make someone feel like their investment wasn't worth it.

So that pressure of that when I'm working independently, it can be quite overwhelming.

And I think it's also in the same step, it's so rewarding, right?

When you can actually then move to the other side.

And I know we used to say the saying, we're turning the ship, right?

And like, I love that phrase because it's like, we really have to remember that like turning a ship into a different direction takes a bunch of time and it takes a bunch of effort.

And it might feel really, really, really, really hard but if we're consistent, persistent and just really showing up every day once the ship gets moving in the other direction, it's like, wow, look at the way that all this effort paid off, right?

And it was worth making these iterations and changes and improvements.

Can you talk about, you know, just kind of the focus or how you plan, you know, when it comes to turning the ship, right?

So can you talk about how you break those big rocks down?

Because I mean, for the listeners, you know, you and I would be on calls, right?

And we would have this big problem, and it was you and I back and forth strategizing, and then I would send you away to go, like, communicate with the rest of the team and get some feedback, And there were some times where, you know, it was clear that I was overwhelmed, right?

And I'm like, Chloe, I need you, right, to take this on.

And there was a lot of like trust there as well.

But like to tie that back to your earlier point, right?

Like The people that you're helping, they need you.

And like, whether you see it or not, right?

Like I can tell you like having calls back and forth with you was like therapy for me.

It was so good because I knew that there was a person on the other side that understood my problems, right?

That understood how to fix them and knew we'd have to break them down into these, you know, small steps so we could gradually turn the ship.

So I want to, if I haven't already, like, and I probably will like a million times this episode, just like say thank you.

But yeah, speak to and you can use the examples of ditto or what you've learned since like, how do you break down these big problems into small, smaller rocks that are easier to move?

So the way that we decide to break down the problem is gonna depend a lot on the business, the CEO, and the priorities and the goals of the company.

So, and priorities and goals, and then also the most major gaps.

So if a team has already, and what was really great about Ditto, for example, you already had a system for documentation.

So when we were doing things, we could very quickly add SOPs into our database.

Like I had a very quick means and like the team's already kind of trained where to look for information, right?

But when we're in these big change management, like for other clients, like they don't even have that system set up, right?

So we need, there's like all these problems and we have to break it down, but like there's sometimes a need to not even break the problems down yet and get some foundational operational pieces in place so that when we do implement the changes.

We can actually communicate those effectively to the team.

And there's actually a way to support the team into using these new solutions.

So I think, again, it does depend on that.

But I think truly you hit the nail on the head.

1 of the beginning spots is building that trust with the CEO, right?

Like there was points and it's building the trust, the CEO trusting me, but me also trusting the CEO to be able to, or founder to be able to like speak to or take action on.

So sometimes there is this interesting dance between, I'd be like, for you and I, like, I'd come to you and be like, what do you want me to do?

And you're like, I don't know, you tell me.

But like, sometimes, like, it would be like, it's like, no, no, no, you need to tell me like, I can't make this decision.

This is a company, like vision decision, right?

And like, I can advise what I would, I would do, but like, this isn't my choice.

So there's the trust in the relationship building, which is really important.

And to get to the point as well where, yeah, you really can let go of some of that, with that trust being able to let go of some of that decision-making control, right?

And just allowing things to get rolled out by your trusted ops person, right?

To be able to actually do it and go and execute.

But other methods in terms of breaking things down, so creating an operation strategy.

So going through, doing an assessment of all of the different areas of business, like team management, team communication, internal knowledge space, client delivery, all these different pieces of business, going across all those areas, identifying the biggest challenges are, right?

And then again, against the priorities of the business, prioritizing those projects, right?

So if we're having major issues with client onboarding, I'm going to focus on that first.

If we are onboarding clients and like your service offering is a month over and a month renewal and your onboarding is crap and you lose your client after month 1 or month 2 because it didn't get onboarded properly.

We're not going to focus on client offboarding.

So it's really knowing the business needs, knowing their highest priorities and focusing on it.

And like some businesses, it might actually be in sales and marketing, like challenges with that.

I know for Ditto, for example, we had a challenge with the sales to deliver a handoff for a piece, right?

So like sales and delivery weren't aligned.

What we were selling wasn't like project management hadn't been able to assess whether or not it were able to deliver it right in that budget.

And looking at that, we had to fix that handoff piece in order to then build out the delivery model.

So the fun answer, It depends on how we can break things down.

But it's, again, it's first building that trust and then really understanding the company's vision, mission, goals, and major pain points, blockers, gaps, and assessing that in order to come up with a strategic operations plan.

And that just reminded me that I think we're seeing a lot of silos even inside of Ditto.

And a lot of the communication was then fragmented as a result.

And, you know, Chris, you know, Huebe was involved for a time as well, but you know, sales happened in a bubble, and then it was handed over to delivery and then they just had to figure out how to deliver it within, you know, these confines.

And then I think, you know, obviously, it was, it seemed to be so obvious, but we just didn't take those steps early on, was to bring delivery into the sales conversation, have them be a part of the proposal and the review and the estimations at that stage.

So it just seemed like it was such an easy example, but without pausing and really looking at it and assessing where is this breaking down, right, like we're just kind of spinning our wheels.

And like I said, communication is fragmented and you find yourself in a world of mess, you know, if you're not careful and looking in the right places.

So, question here is around, you know, change management, right?

Like, things are a mess, you know, you're sailing this ship, you need to make changes.

Like, I think I said to you or someone at 1 point, like, I just want to stop everything right now, like stop operations, stop sales, stop absolutely everything, fix it, like almost like we would take a vacation, right?

Or a break from from work and delivery and just fix everything, bring everyone back, retrain them and have a fresh start.

But that's just not possible when it comes to business.

Maybe like with some of your other clients, how have you approached that conversation where it's like, We have to move this through in stages, test, iterate, right?

There was like an analogy that I recently used with a client when they were getting overwhelmed about and saying very much the same thing.

It's like, I just want this in and I want it fixed and I want everything to work.

And the challenge with operations is it's like you're flying a plane while trying to change the screws on the engine.

You have to know that you're probably going to have some turbulence, and you have to prepare your flight crew to support your passengers along the way.

And you have to hold steady and you have to pay attention and you have to just keep on going.

And I think that is communication and really preparing not just the CEO, from my perspective, not just the CEO, but the whole team that we expect, we anticipate, and we expect things to kind of be challenging for a period of time and we all have to be ready for mistakes to be made and things might fall through the cracks, you might lose a client and we have to be okay with that.

You know we want to, we're going to mitigate that as much as possible.

The last thing I would want is someone to lose a client from it.

But you have to also understand that sometimes change can get messy.

But at the end of the day, what it looks like on the other side is so much smoother and you're gonna be able to get 3 clients, 4 clients, 5 clients back because of the way that you have improved what you're doing.

And so for preparing teams, I think preparing teams for change is really, again, building that trust, coming in, really being able to communicate what the whole thing is going to look like and what really is all included, right?

Because we can't just change a template and just say that we're going to change our Asana template and it's perfect.

It's like, no, you change the Asana template, you create new training videos on how to actually use the template, you have to update your SOPs related to how to use the template, you have to roll it out, maybe give a team training, you have to then change it over to all of your existing client projects if you need to do that, right?

So there's pieces that everyone needs to consider and the challenge with ops is often people think that you can just, oh, we're gonna just change.

It's like, no, we've got a whole process for change And we really need to be prepared for that.

And what was really beautiful at the end of Ditto was we got into such a cadence of it, right?

So it started to be a point where anytime there was a challenge, anytime there was an improvement request, it would filter through our system, right?

We'd go in and actually make the change, update the SOPs, put it out in the weekly training or the status updates, and then have it go live.

The cadence you get into once a team is able to adopt a culture of improvement and a culture of change management and continuous improvement, where you start learning that flow of what has to happen each time something gets improved and changed.

And I want to call out the kind of differences.

And I'm going to bear all today, like an open book, right?

Like everything you're saying, Chloe, it's like, it's bringing me right back to where we were at because like, we were changing so quickly because we needed to, right?

We needed to improve, but it's almost like we were going at a pace that wasn't sustainable for like long-term success, right?

And I remember hearing from some of the team members through different channels, it's like, oh, another change, oh, we're changing this again, or I thought we just did this, or this is confusing.

Like we're doing this for the betterment of the team, but it's just not being received that way.

And so like, I think that's 1 of the things that, you know, founders, CEOs need to be aware of is like, when it comes to improving, it's not just like go, go, go all the time.

It's, it's this, this state of continual improvement where you fix something, test, iterate, let it level out and then move on to the next, to the next stage.

I think it's, it's that a knowledge and awareness, but it's also in what I want, like what my biggest dreams are, is that more and more founders, CEOs, business owners, people who start things to consider ops from the start.

I'm not saying you didn't at all, but even the most, the people who think that they've thought it all through, there's a lot sometimes that can fall through the cracks.

So implementing knowledge management systems from the start, right?

Again, you already had those pieces in place, but having those from the start, having training, regular team trainings just slotted in, team communications, weekly updates slotted in, right?

Pieces related to team management and team training available from the start so that, and part of onboarding is like teaching them about how we are continuously changing.

And I think people are more and more adapted to it.

But yeah, it definitely is that, that can help mitigate some of those challenges in some regards, because I think some of the challenges we were facing was we were still kind of like implementing our change management system.

It's like really giving the changes a chance to bake for a little bit, like put things in, let things play, and have a a small task, a bunch of sub tasks that say all the improvements for v2 and v3 and v4, right?

So like being able to actually slot future improvements and be okay with the fact that everything's not perfect right away.

And I remember, like, Kate, Kate Penny was 1 of those people on the team who's always like, are we just going to like relax for a little bit?

Like, we just changed, like, let's figure it out, like, we should be changing so quickly.

And be like, why are we moving so quickly?

And like, I didn't want to hear it at the time.

Like, we don't have to be moving this quickly, we should give some things time to settle.

So let's talk about that, that long term sustainable, like transformation, like, You talk about knowledge systems.

What are your recommendations around how to effectively train and then create these knowledge systems so that these transformations can be long lasting and the team feels like they're a betterment to the company, not a hindrance to their work.

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69 - Embracing Continuous Improvement for Business Growth with Chloe Handelman