How to Get AI-Ready Before You Implement It with Jeffrey Lambert (#78)

Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Welcome to Exit Algorithms, the podcast where we decode what it really takes to unlock growth, streamline operations, and prepare your business for a high value exit. I'm your host, Pete Vera, and today I'm joined by Jeffrey Lambert. He's a principal IT consultant and a founder of Blue Fusion Partners, with 25 plus years of experience leading digital transformation and SaaS implementations across many different industries. He's successfully delivered eighteen global SLAS implementations since twenty twelve and now coaches project manager management leaders and growing organizations on practical PMO frameworks and AI readiness.

Jeffrey, excited to have you here. Welcome to the podcast. Jeffrey K Lambert: Excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Pete.

Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Can you share a bit about your background and and business journey? Jeffrey K Lambert: Sure, absolutely. so first half of my career was spent primarily in the Washington DC area, military defense, federal work, intelligence work, from a in a contractor space, progressive roles through IT, hardware and software, and then moved to the Chicago area and switched over to the commercial side again. in IT across a number of different verticals, finance, real estate, pharma, medical devices.

And and then in the pa in the second half of my career really shifted over into software development and managing data teams, getting into agile practices, and that led me into project program management of which just as technology changes and evolves the last twelve years has been spent focused in on SaaS platform implementation. So put it helping companies do readiness assessments, coordinate the team, the framework, the governance, and then get it launched for true business and digital transformations.

most recently in the past year and a half, also adding in now a branch of our business which is a a series of digital products as well as webinars and educational pieces for new project managers, business owners who need to establish some PMO rigor, as well as mid-career folks who may be positioning themselves to learn a bit more and get deeper into project management. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Yeah, awesome. Yeah, and you know, increasingly relevant these days with all these, you know, businesses trying to implement tech and and new projects.

I'm I'm sure you're you have your your hands full these days, huh? Jeffrey K Lambert: we do. We stay pretty busy. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: for some of our audience, you know, they're business owners, but they might not really be super familiar with what a P what PMO is.

why does a growing company actually need one? Jeffrey K Lambert: So oftentimes with a company when they first you know, are brand new, scaling up, depending on size, but typically, you know, the the fifty to two hundred mark on employees, keeping track of projects goes beyond having a a spreadsheet or a checklist. oftentimes that project management is shouldered by folks who already have additional responsibilities with their day job. And so a company may want to consider then formalizing a few things, but it doesn't have to be an enterprise model.

So PMO stands for Project Management Office, and there are some core artifacts that you want to have with any project. And so it's establishing some discipline in having a project charter and and within that charter you identify what's the problem we're solving with this project, what are the objectives, the goals, the KPIs, what's the budget, you know, who Who is who's our major stakeholders, who's our steering committee, our operational team, the risk issues, the dependencies, constraints, and and then also what's in scope and out of scope.

And that document is the foundation of then running a good governed project. And from there you plan, you put together a timeline, the tasks that are involved, and you carry out through discipline execution. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: what do you see goes wrong, you know, when a company doesn't have proper project governance? you know, what what are the costs of that?

Jeffrey K Lambert: Sure. so typically it's right within the first two or three weeks of launching a project, if if senior leaders are not aligned on what the objectives are, and if it's not documented well by the project team and then c communicated out through regular cadences, it's much like you can't hit a target that you can't see if if there's changing priorities, if If things aren't clear as to what the finish line is, then that's lack of governance. By having governance in place, a company it doesn't have to be cumbersome, it doesn't have to be extra work and it really should remain lean, especially with smaller companies, mid-market companies.

it's there to help improve execution operationally. And so by it Putting in place some discipline, some rigor with some of these core artifacts, templates, and processes, you in fact will increase the value and you'll have visibility to what is increasing the value, and you'll also have an impact on the valuation in a positive way for the company. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: what does a typical client engagement look like when you onboard a a business? What are the first things you you look at?

Jeffrey K Lambert: So 70% of the clients that I get have already gone down the path of getting started without having a number of these items in place that I mentioned. So it's either going off the rails or it's already gone sideways. And so it's a program or project reset. And so we come in and we do a triage of current state.

But even if it's a green field, a brand new. starting project which those that can be a lot of fun to start when you're actually the first one there. they s you still encounter the same things and that is is a project or a program will should have a a program project sponsor. So when you have that sponsor then the project manager really works very closely with that sponsor and the sponsor will have a lot of the background information so he or she is the one you want to get to know and and and essentially do some short discovery for yourself as the project manager, the project leader.

And and again, those are all the items I mentioned before. Yeah. What's the burning platform? What is it that we're solving with this project?

get that documented. What's in and out of scope? You know, who are the the executive leaders that are stakeholders in this that have influence that may be supportive, they may be resistant, and who's going to be on this stakeholder committee? And you get that documented.

And from there you're then able to build top-down the next level tactical managers who work alongside a project manager in identifying people on the core team. So functional leads, technical leads, the resources to actually do the work. And that's the beginning in setting it up. It's also important to understand before any of this starts, Is from a readiness standpoint, is the company ready?

Are the departments involved ready to undergo this business or digital transformation? and typically business and digital transformation walk hand in hand. A lot of times, you know, you you're you're maybe changing the way things are done from a business process perspective and then it's being facilitated through technology. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm.

what does AI readiness actually look like? w what does a company need to have in place first? Jeffrey K Lambert: So from a AI readiness perspective, some of the most important things are cybersecurity, making sure that not just the things that are done to secure the network itself, but also to fend off external attacks that needs to be tested out and checked and make sure that that's in place. data governance.

So if there is not any type of data governance that needs to Then there needs to be at least a core program put together to identify, all right, what's our current state of data? What data is being utilized by what groups, who's in charge, who owns it, and and then are there any processes as far as the the backup and recovery of data, the cleansing of data, the normalization, the rationalization, and putting together a governor data governance program. AI adds a whole new dimension to Governance from the standpoint of unstructured data.

So data can be organized but not structured. What adds to it now is with AI, more than other uses in the past, AI utilizes unstructured data such as text messages, voicemail, th Slack messages, anything that's that's, you know, it can be video. And and these are things that traditionally were not always in the scope of data governance when you're talking about, you know, a logistics system or a procurement system. now those come into play and add another dimension to it.

So those have to be wrangled and and you have to identify, okay, how are we going to put policies around this? Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. it depends on the the the business and the use case. each project s can be quite a bit different.

Jeffrey K Lambert: The environment, right. Absolutely. And the way they do work. And and sometimes you may have to take a look at that and say, How how are you currently working?

And some of that might have to change a bit. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: once a business decides to implement a new tech suite or even just a singular single tool, yeah, what are some things business owners can do to effectively manage the the change in their organization? Jeffrey K Lambert: Sure. So in any engagement that we do, we walking hand in hand with project management as we engage organizational change management.

And so while from a project management perspective, I may be leading an effort to triage current state and to understand what needs to take place if in fact we're doing a reset or if it's a fresh start, we also engage organizational change management to do a change impact assessment. And what that means is so in the world of project management, a stakeholder typically is a senior level executive or leader who has a stake in the results of a program or a project. And then you have a steering committee and operational team.

In the world of organizational change management, a stakeholder is anybody in the community that will be impacted. So they could be impacted in the way they do work, they could be impacted in how it may change data. or workflow. They could be impacted based upon roles and responsibilities, even even organizational change within the structure, okay?

and they could be moved about. So all of these things are assessed at all levels in a change organizational change management assessment. my partner is an expert and certif certified heavily in in the space of organizational change management and serves as a strategist to our teams when we go out and do these type of initiatives and we engage the proper folks to be involved with change management. Sometimes companies will have all have an OCM or organizational change management office that walks hand in hand typically with the PMO.

And and so therefore we can tag team and work together on that. But it's very important to have that in place. And so what does an OCM do? An organizational change management group?

They put out communications on a frequent basis telling the community what is taking place, what it w what is the status as far as from a change perspective. They have town halls so that people can hear frequent updates. Maybe it's month monthly. And these are different from having the team, the project management team, steering committee, and stakeholder meetings.

It's a way to have a venue for people to also to give feedback. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jeffrey K Lambert: A change manager will also do f cadence type surveys. They'll identify through that original impact assessment what areas need training, what areas are we gonna have to do heavier communications, where are we seeing big gaps in change, and how will we address that.

and then that it's coordinated all the way through testing to see from a UI perspective, UI UX, so user interface, user exchange, with the screens if it's a software solution, or it could be if you were retooling a factory floor, time motion. How is it working with the manufacturing and assembly teams? And then at the very end, when you go live, after you go, you know, the prep for go live and after you go live, the hyper care. And so essentially having a command center where PMO, CMO, and then key people from the team are there to respond to the people, the user community.

Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm-hmm. Jeffrey K Lambert: with any issues, questions, or additional training. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: you don't wanna do a in implement something and then not everybody uses it, right? Jeffrey K Lambert: The worst thing that can happen is not having good user adoption because it you know, and the thing is by having engaging organizational change management.

I've s I've seen the model where they'll I've seen companies where they want to have a project manager also be the change manager. first off, the workload's entirely t too intense for one person to do it. additionally it's rare to see someone who's trained strongly in in both of those spaces. regardless of that.

you know, in days of old, c there would be situations I've seen where you know you're a month or two months away from go live on a one year project and someone will say, Well, hey, did we talk to change management? And it's that's as it's well you're too late. But you know having that relationship of of Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm. Jeffrey K Lambert: of a change management team communicating with people and basically through the process before you go live, you're working to make it to have everybody understand what is the vision, what are the goals, how is this going to benefit it, what's going to be the value to the company and the business model.

And everyone will feel warm and fuzzy about this this go live date and the solution coming to fruition. And so there will be some bumps in the road. Most of the time after any any type of go live, and your community will have faith, the goodwill have will have been built up that they know that this is a strong project team and that they will get things straightened out quickly. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: you started Blue Fusion Partners a bit before the you know the AI wave.

I'm curious how has AI impacted your business and also, you know, your industry at large? Jeffrey K Lambert: So starting with the industry itself, if we speak to the area of project portfolio management, there I th I think there's two schools of thought. There's there's a lot of a lot of things going on with the the pushing out of of you know prompt engineering suggestions, yeah, white papers or or or resources for for writing good prompts, but AI is so much more than that. And the other school of thought is positioning AI so that then with the proper co the proper guard guardrails, the proper context, the proper knowledge base in place, especially if it's project specific, is is building and having the capabilities to then start looking at future scenarios specifically in the area of risk management and and being able to be proactive in identifying risk as they as they come up.

and and then also to then be able to have multiple options to take a look at as far as forecasting what a good mitigation plan would be. For us with Blue Fusion one of the things that we've done in the last couple of years is we've so we've we've entrenched ourselves pretty deeply into into AI A AI training for ourselves as well as certifications and understanding h what is the difference w from a readiness assessment for a SAS implementation versus an AI implementation. And and and again, I mentioned it earlier, it's the cyber, it's the data.

It's making sure that the organization itself is ready for it. What are we seeing right now? We're seeing companies, especially lower lower half mid market and and mature strong small businesses where there'd be pockets of folks doing little pilot projects. However, rarely do we see where it's in a unified approach at the then there's not a strategy.

And so strategically speaking, what should take place is you do that discovery as far as what are the interests of the company, where do they think that AI could help, then do a readiness assessment, which includes also identifying on after that readiness assessment, identifying workflows, processes, and shoring those up. to then be able to drive out and do value mapping and say, okay, these are the spaces where AI could help you and here's how it could help you. And putting together a roadmap, putting together a plan.

Yeah. It it's something that it's going to take time across 12 or 18 months, of course, depending upon the size of the corporation, but they don't have to take this enterprise model of boiling the ocean. They can do it in in controlled sequences. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Mm.

Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, I I love your your perspective. man, it's been great.

I I we're coming up on time here, Jeffrey. I I have one final question for you. If you could give one practical tip for business owners who want to get more out of their technology investments right now, what would that be? Jeffrey K Lambert: So I would I would say do not get focused on a single technology.

I would take a step back and and and do a refresh and understand what our business model looks like now, current state. Where do we want our business model to go? Understand the value streams and then and then take a look at your technology and say, Okay, what technology is going to help us get there? And you know what?

You in in a number of instances you it it may already be in place and you just need to lever th leverage things out a little bit more of what you already have in-house. It's knowing how to what types of AI applications or solutions should be applied in order to arrive at at the most value for your company. Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: where can listeners find you and and learn more about your work? Jeffrey K Lambert: Sure, I am on LinkedIn, Jeffrey K.

Lambert, and our company website is bluefusionpartners.com. And if they like, I have a giveaway which can be obtained at Fusion Pro das PM.com slash F AQ S.

Frequently asked questions. So fusionpro dash PM.com. slash F A Q S and Top ten frequently asked questions of project managers as well as a a project manager's starter guide.

Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: thank you so much for hopping on today, Jeffrey. It's great talking to you. Jeffrey K Lambert: Pete, thank you so much for your time. You have a great day and thank you for having me as a guest.

Pete Vera, Exit Algorithms: Absolutely.