Mauricio Romero
In today's rapidly changing business environment, understanding and embracing transformation is more critical than ever. In this podcast, Melissa Reynolds of Arcadia Consulting dives into the significance of business transformation, the nuances of cultural integration in mergers, and the importance of proactive adaptation in today's dynamic business landscape. From the subtle symptoms indicating the need for organizational change to the intricate dynamics of cultural integration in the aftermath of mergers, Melissa unveils complex topics with clarity and expertise. Dive in to uncover invaluable insights on how to change and drive your business culture!
Podcast Transcript:
Mauricio:
Welcome to our podcast. Today we have our very special guest, Melissa Reynolds. Melissa is a senior consultant in Arcadia Consulting Group, and she's a great person and a specialist in sales and educating people. So, Melissa, thank you so much for being with us today. Melissa, can you give us a brief overview about Arcadia Consulting and your role?
The Global Influence of Arcadia Consulting
Melissa:
Sure, and thank you so much for having me and allowing me to have the platform to tell everyone why I love Arcadia so much and I've been having a great onboarding experience with them. And, you having me here today really means a lot to me to to share with you and every one of your viewers about who we are.
So Arcadia is a global professional consultancy, and we specialize in cultural and behavioral change, and we do that as a form of business transformation. Just similar like you would go through any sort of digital transformation. We help our clients on that journey to have real effective, sustainable change, and we do that through three different ways and we call it NAP.
It stands for neuroscience, anthropology and psychology. So we take the science behind everything and the whys to have really effective, sustainable change.
Transforming Business Cultures
Mauricio:
So it's a completely new way of making people do what they need to do in your organization and that they are convinced of doing it.
Melissa:
Absolutely.
Mauricio:
You have headquarters in London, in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in Boston. So you're expanding. What prompted that expansion?
Melissa:
So I would I would say definitely the voice of our clients and how our referral business and the sustainable change that we were able to successfully implement and deliver to our clients in the European and Asia-Pacific markets. That prompted the move to North America and to bring the change to the North American clients. So a lot of our clients are also global like we are, and they have locations here in the States and we have been in the United States for and Canada for about five years, where we'll be celebrating our five year anniversary this June.
And, you know, we've had some great successes over the last 12 years in the image and APAC markets and excited to diversify our clients here in North American region.
Mauricio:
That's great. And it's a great advantage that you have people everywhere in the world. So you can have high educated consultants that has been there and see all kinds of problems everywhere.
Melissa:
Absolutely. And I think one of the strong suits about Arcadia is the way that they have recruited and the you know, we each have our skill set that we are subject matter experts in. Something that I love to do is is networking. And so I've been brought on to bring on new business, particularly in the Southeast, to help diversify our portfolio that was heavily focused in the financial institutions.
And so with my past of the things that I have been able to achieve as far as business to business in the manufacturing sector, as well as health care and technology, and another person that started with me came from pharmaceuticals with a neuroscience background. So he's definitely helped me on some of my messaging and I've helped him on some of his networking capabilities and so we are very collaborative.
That is something that I love about Arcadia. We have a like a one firm mindset and we are able to collaborate with APAC. You know, sometimes it might requiring one of us to stay up late or get on early with a 16 hour time difference. But the meaningful one on ones that we have with one another and how we collaborate and how our incentivize is to make each other successful.
It's definitely something that I really value about being an Arcadian and an architect of change, which is what we also call ourselves.
The Art and Science of Change in Organizations
Mauricio:
Oh, yes, I love that slogan Architects of Change. Because what you really do or are doing, it's art making people to do what they need to do. It's an art form and it's amazing that you're not making it just an art. It's art and science, and you're bringing all the science with all the knowledge. You've been developed through years in neurology and anthropology.
Melissa:
Absolutely. And so the art of it. I love how you talk about taking that art and the science because it's not a one size fits all package. There is definitely unique things and nuances that each industry brings and finding the subject matter experts for that. And that's what I love about it, is that the science, there's proof to what we do and we have decades of research to back that up.
Mauricio:
Melissa tell me, how has the role of a sales consultant evolved in the recent years, especially with increasingly liason on digital platforms and technology?
Melissa:
Yeah, and I know AI is a big topic right now these days, and there's a lot of different topics of how the landscape has changed for us. I've been in wireless since the nineties and so I watched the evolution of how things changed with cell phones and so everything has changed and there's still a human component. When we look at the three things for business transformation, it's people process and technology.
That's something that I've learned from my mentors in business intelligence when I was working in the technology sector and Arcadia has the people portion covered. So we really want to take that ownership and take that because off of their plate, because a lot of people really focus on their strong suit, which is the technology, but they might not be people, people, you know, So we will take that ownership of that people portion, have them focus on what their strong suit is, which is technology. And then the bridge that brings us together and unites us would be the process.
The People Component in Business Transformation
Mauricio:
This is so important because concentrating on people could really make a difference in any company. You could have a great process, you could have great technology, but if people it's not really supporting that. And in the case of sales personnel, you're making them being the subject matter of experts and educators and touch base with their clients. So it's not just a process, it's a whole mindset.
And talking about that mindset and I know it's really important. How do you work the mindset in an organization? How do you change that?
Melissa:
Yeah, and so a lot of that starts with recruiting. So there might be some raw talent that someone has that they're open to suggestion and some people are just not. And so that's something that I think comes with years of experience taking a personal inventory. I know that I'm not the same type of consultant I was 20 years ago.
Sometimes I look back and cringe at things I may have said, or you could see the course correct happen when even in our organization we practice what we preach, or we'll go through the curriculum and I'll say, "Oh, I did that one time" and you want to have people that are open to it. That's powerful. And, so maybe the problem started in the recruiting, and that's something that I learned decades ago, was I put something forward to somebody in leadership in a past company and I said, "Put these in order of your priority of what is most important to you, people, inventory and money." This was a person that was very operations focused and said, "Oh, definitely the inventory." For me, the answer is, oh, we should prioritize the people, because if you have the right people in place, everything will follow suit, Your inventory will be perfect, your money, your sales will come in. A lot of organizations bring in people and then maybe just kind of set it and forget it and they don't have any continuing education.
And so that's very important too, because sometimes by the time people are in leadership, it's decades have gone since they've had someone come in and provide them training and really nourished that career of theirs.
Mauricio:
Melissa What would be the first misconceptions or problems organizations are having?
Melissa:
Yeah, so a lot of people, especially in learning and development and something that is what we are very good at is surveying and asking the globe, What do you see that are popular trends right now? We have a survey running actually it ends today. We have it globally going out to all our L&D professionals are HR Professionals, because we really want to stay on top of the trends.
We keep everything anonymous. We keep them short. They're not very long. So we do see participation and we do really listen to the voice of our clients. And that kind of sets the tone for what we're going to do the following year. So we're always planning, we're always innovating, we're always adapting to the current climate, the current environment.
And I think that is important and that's something that our surveys do benefit us.
The Real Role of a Consultant
Mauricio:
Melissa when we hear a company and say that we're consultants, it's so broad that so many times you don't, you don’t know exactly what what you're doing. Can you tell us or share a little bit about the process? So how do you take our client from the top and of course the outcome?
Melissa:
Sure. And you know, a lot of it's so funny because you could ask ten different people what a consultant is. You'll get ten different answers, right? So it's hard to even explain to my family, like, what do you do? And traditionally, like any other sales type of call, it all starts with, for lack of better words, that discovery.
All right. We're all familiar with like, let's get on that discovery call today, you know, So that type of mentality and really what you're doing is your fact finding your right, fitting the solution. We don't want to just suggest something that's not going to be pertinent to what you do. And every business is so unique. There's so many different nuances to different industries.
And then even within those same industries, there might be different institutions or knowledge. So really just having that first discovery call to find out what some pain points are and as far as being the consultant and the definition of that is you really need to be that subject matter expert for your client. If you're not to find who is and to have that value add of who, then can bring more value to their organization actually helps a lot of people, especially as we're seeing different generations of salespeople and the different styles.
I've noticed they don't like to be called salespeople. They rather be called consultants because they feel like they're really, truly helping. And I think that is important. And I think that kind of takes the stigma off of the quote unquote salesperson.
The Secret Sauce of Transformation: DEI and Changing Mindsets
Mauricio:
Okay, You just told me about how you started in the process and then what you do to explain me a little bit, how do you change the mindset? How do you change the leadership? How do you change the behavior with your secret sauce?
Melissa:
Yeah, so with our secret sauce. So a lot of companies are doing DEI training and they're doing things for whether it's compliance or because it's trendy, but this is just always been baked into the Arcadius secret sauce in the recipe it's sprinkled throughout are non-branded DEI initiatives. So whether you're getting a course on how to create a one page or advanced business writing our diverse facilitators, it really starts there.
It starts with who we are in the organization and that comes out and exudes out of all of our facilitators, out of our team. That is something that we take pride in and something that has been part of our secret sauce for all these years. As far as the process, when, you know, we had mentioned that we're architects of change and just like any traditional architect, you start with a blueprint, right?
So if you're going to go build a building, you're going to start with that blueprint. The goal is to have it embedded into their every day when they sign on in the morning or, you know, however their processes, if they're clocking in or whatever it is, it is part of their mindset. And I think everything starts with mindset.
Mindset Programs
So we have all different programs. For me, I happen to love all the mindset products that we have, the growth mindset, particularly, especially from being a sales leader for two decades. If you don't have the mindset, what's the point of anything else, right? So that's where we've had successes and some organizations want to see that ROI, that return on their investment in something like training and development.
They want to have that straight line to draw back to, okay, this is what this consultancy did for us as far as training and developing our leaders. It also comes with having that personal inventory of saying maybe our leadership is the problem. Nobody wants to admit that it might be at the top, right? So we all have that one friend that is like, Oh, our friend group doesn't have that one person.
It's because they are that one person, right? So really being able to have that conversation, which is not always easy to have, maybe we have to kind of see, is there a recruiting problem? Is there a customer experience problem? That is another big one, the voice of the customer. So our client's customer, their end user, or are they having a positive experience and everything changes within each organization.
So really starting with that discovery call and that first rate fit to find out what the solution is, it all really starts there.
Identifying Organizational Symptoms
Mauricio:
Yeah, that's great because we're talking about the symptoms. How do you know? When do you need a consultant program? What other symptoms do organizations have in the rotation leadership? When is their proper time to call Arcadia?
Melissa:
The best time to call? This is true for anything. It's true for marketing, It's true for business intelligence. You don't want to call too late, right? So I'm sure this is the same for you. And marketing is you don't want to have someone calling you after they're, you know, in the negative, right? You don't want to have to call us when you have such a morale problem because you've been acquired by another company or you're about to be acquired and you have a culture problem, you don't want to do it when it's too late.
So it's just like bad data. If you have bad data, there's a cost, there's an opportunity cost of having that data, the cost of doing nothing. Sometimes is
is the opportunity cost. And you could actually put a dollar amount on not doing anything worth your data. And what that's costing you. Bad data costs money, but doing absolutely nothing, whether it's in your business transformation journey, your marketing journey, your digital transformation journey, there's an opportunity cost of doing nothing.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Mauricio:
Melissa Given the disruptive nature in today's business landscape, how does Arcadia consulting stay ahead of trends to understand and address emerging challenges? Yes.
Melissa:
So I think I mentioned earlier about the surveys that we have and really just hearing what the L&D the learning and development community is looking for if you don't stay ahead of what the competition I'm not really worried about, There's a lot of different consultancies out there. I'm not worried about the competition that we have. Every client of mine should be worried about their competition because their competition is probably innovating and adapting and to try to stay ahead.
So that's really the focus of why business transformation is so important, is because if they're not on that journey, their competitors are.
Arcadia's Current Initiatives
Mauricio:
Are there any other significant projects or initiative that Arcadia Consulting is currently engaged?
Melissa:
Yes. So we have a lot of exciting projects coming up. We have a partnership with Shurm, which is the Society for Human Resource. We have a few things that we'll be partnering with some global businesses on that as well to create awareness about the campaign surrounding what we will be d oing with the Shurm. And also I plan on teaming up with some mentors that have taught me about business intelligence and how the digital transformation journey is very similar to the business transformation journey that kind of came to me.
Melissa:
I had this epiphany when I had a one on one with our founder of Arcadia, and it was just such a great experience for a founder of a company to give me that one on one time and to really find out. And I told him I was going to be on your podcast and just kind of ask him some questions about how he felt, the misconceptions were about what we do and hearing his feedback.
And it just really just clicked for me. I was like, business transformation and digital transformation is so similar in the fact that businesses get stuck in that business as usual in digital transformation. We compared it to the stages of grief, which is I find very similar in business transformation. Is that denial, right? So we're all familiar with the stage of group denial.
We try to protect the incumbency, we try to protect the status quo and just everything's fine here. Nothing to see. You can't keep doing business as usual. So getting companies out of that first rut, of that denial stage, that's very important .
Accepting the Need for Change
Mauricio:
First you need to understand that you have a problem or accept that you have a problem. And that's that's difficult.
Melissa:
It is. And a lot of people, especially if the company has been passed down to generation to generation, you find that this was maybe someone's grandfather's company and they protecting that legacy is important. Sometimes it requires disruption and sometimes it requires innovation. Bob Iger even mentioned you have to do it untested and without fear. So I know artificial intelligence and we talked about earlier how the landscape has changed with technology and in the consultant world.
But we can't operate out of fear because as I mentioned earlier, our competitors are ready. They're already ahead of the trends.
Mauricio:
As you look towards the future in central Florida and of course, globally, where do you see Arcadia consulting in the next five years?
Melissa:
That's a great question. So in the next five years, I would love to diversify who our clients are. We do a business with all the top financial institutions. I would love to keep the relationship going at the financial institutions, but also really to diversify our portfolio the same way that they would suggest to their clients is to have more in the manufacturing space to have more clients in the Southeast.
We're very heavily focused in the Northeast right now, and there's so much potential, especially here in Orlando, with companies moving from Silicon Valley and all over the world. You definitely see the transformation of Orlando and Central Florida in particular. And to be part of that is an exciting time. It's an exciting time for me to be joining Arcadia for myself.
But it's also a time that's exciting for Arcadia to be expanding into the Southeast as well.
The Importance of Investing in People
Mauricio:
Yes, the region is growing exponentially and if you are in any specific industry, which would be this industry that needs right away Arcadia to be prepared for this change?
Melissa:
I would say any company that is struggling culturally, whether it is, you know, I could think of a few that come to mind that have either recently been acquired or have acquired other businesses. And so the same way that in digital transformation and business intelligence, you want to have a single source of truth, you also want to have a single source of culture.
So you want to have that one firm mentality. You want to be able to be united culturally and be inclusive. You have a lot of companies that are being acquired that might have been part of a five or six different merger account and not only do you have different ERP and inventory systems talking to each other, you have different cultures from different companies that have existed for maybe decades that are now one company.
So it's very important to invest in the people because you want to have a unified communication.
Mauricio:
And that's amazing because always as a CEO, you always rely on your financial guys and you always rely on your engineers for the technology and you rely on your marketing guys when it comes to people, sometimes you feel that there's not a big support anywhere. So that's great that you're bringing all these services and consulting services to the to the region.
Melissa:
Yeah, I don't want people to look at learning and development as an expense. You should look at that as an investment. You should you should look at that. Is that is something that is going to give you just as much as ROI as anything else. Because if you invest in your people, you're going to be successful. Your customers are going to appreciate that you value your employees.
The Cost of Inaction vs Being Proactive
Mauricio:
When's the proper time to call Arcadia?
Melissa:
So I would... yesterday would be right? Because you don't want to call me when there's a problem all ready. Let's be proactive instead of reactive. And there's such an opportunity cost of doing nothing so similar to in marketing. I'm sure you know, you don't want to have your clients call you when it's too late. You want to take real proactive measures to make sure that you're building a culture that fosters collaboration, a growth mindset.
You want to make sure that you are on pace to outrun your competitors because they're already getting on the train of business transformation. You don't want to be left in the dust by their progress. So I would say that it's it's it's probably a good time to have that discovery call, at least to find out what pain points there are and then to see what solutions that we can offer.
Mauricio:
Yeah, this is very important because after COVID, things changed so much so people and CEOs and the companies are stagnated, they don't know what to do. They are doing the same thing or they don't want to take the next step. So right now it's the proper time to take the next steps in Databranding. I believe one of our problems that we have, it's clients are not doing anything.
We call it Ceteris Paribus. So it's staying the same so when you when you call them okay , you didn't choose probably our services who did you choose And they say, no, we really didn't do anything. So yeah, this is a mindset also that we have to change here in the industry and with the times.
Melissa:
Right. And you know, there's so many things that are can be said that it's a negative close or you're trying to scare someone. It's not a scare tactic. It's the reality. It is the reality that doing nothing costs a lot more than doing something.
Mauricio:
Yeah. Okay. So if you're doing nothing, you should start thinking about this change and how to prepare for the future because we don't know how it's going to come. We know that the world is getting crazier than ever. So I believe when we have these conditions, we need to go back to the basics. And one of the basis, it's investment people.
Melissa:
Absolutely. I love that everything else will follow suit. Even marketing.
Melissa's Passion Project
Mauricio:
Yeah, even marketing. And well, Melissa, besides bringing great consultant services to the region, what else do you do?
Melissa:
So I'm also a board of Directors and Development chair for Fostering Connections. Florida.org. You can find more information on what we do to help youth impacted by foster care. We have career readiness programs for foster children that have been impacted by foster care. And it's important to me because my grandmother grew up in foster care in the 1930s in New York.
So I do that in her honor and it's something that I am passionate about and, you know, I've met a lot of great people and our board is phenomenal. I get to work with some really phenomenal board members.
Arcadia's Achievements
Mauricio:
And Melissa, I know Arcadia Consulting's been very successful and that you have won some awards. Can you tell us about it?
Melissa:
Yeah. So we are the proud recipients of the Brandon Hall Award and we we won that award last year for some work that we had submitted that we did with one of our top clients, and we won the award for 2022 in the learning and development space.
Getting Personal with Melissa
Mauricio:
That's great. Would you like to share something that people might not know about you, your coworkers, your peers?
Melissa:
Well, let's see. There's probably something I haven't shared with everybody is I really enjoy crafting. That's my happy place, you know, other than other than going to Disney with my husband, I love just kind of going into my crafts space, is completely separate than my office. So I kind of, you know, separate those two worlds. So this is my working space, this is my craft space.
Melissa:
And going in there is just, you know, it's it's nice to still be able to use that creativity. And it also helps me with even thinking about different designs for clients. So having a creative outlet I think is, is definitely important.
Contacting Melissa
Mauricio:
Melissa How could our audience can get in touch with you?
Melissa:
Sure. So you can reach me at Melissa.Reynolds@ArcadiaConsulting.com. I'd love to set up a discovery call or have a cup of coffee. It's, it's not going to cost anything. I enjoy talking to people. I love prospecting, I love networking. I have a strong female tribe of women and that have really just helped one another and I love that.
Melissa:
But I'm open to you know, I've had some really amazing male mentors as well, so I welcome any sort of networking opportunities or any sort of partnerships. I you know, if it's not right for either of us, then no harm, no foul. We we go our separate ways and I'll always stay in contact with everybody. So I'm a firm believer in kind of keeping on to these relationships.
Melissa:
No matter where you go, you never know when somebody can help one another.
Exclusive Offer
Mauricio:
And Melissa, you have a surprise for us. I know that you want to share some material, some special material that you only give to clients.
Melissa:
Yeah, so I'd love to do some, whether you know, if you would like to host a taster or we have some really talented facilitators that we could talk about doing a taster. We have some assessments that I can send as far as kind of seeing just not full length one, but samples of what our assessments look like and how the data from that can kind of really get you thinking -- and, there's even some coaching opportunities inside those assessments.
Melissa:
So, yeah I'd love to to send you one of those!
Mauricio:
Perfect, and we're going to share it so people can get to you. Melissa thank you so much for being with us today. We really learn a ton and thank you so much. It's been a wonderful conversation.
Melissa:
Thank you.
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