How to Manage Your Company Even if You’re Miles Away

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your employees all the information they need to be successful at their jobs. Now let’s get started with the show.

John Corcoran: Hey, everyone. John Corcoran here, co-host of the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your staff everything they need to be successful at their job. Some of our past guests include David Allen of Getting Things Done and Michael Gerber of The E-Myth and many more. And today’s guest is Mitch Dodd from Kintec. He’s the COO at Kintec Footwear & Orthotics. And we’re going to talk all about an acquisition that they went through. It was really interesting. They acquired a company that was 2,700 miles away at a chain of clinics and how they integrated their systems and processes after they did that acquisition. But first, before we get into that, this episode is brought to you by SweetProcess. Have you ever had team members ask you the same questions over and over again? And it’s the 10th time you spent explaining it?

John Corcoran: Well, there’s a better way. There’s a solution. SweetProcess is a software that makes it drop dead easy to train and onboard new staff and save time with existing staff. Not only do universities, banks, hospitals, and software companies use them, but first responder government agencies use them in life or death situations to run their operations. You can use SweetProcess to document all of the repetitive tasks that eat up your precious time, so you can focus on growing your team and empowering them to do their best work. Sign up for a free 14 day trial, no credit card required go to sweetprocess.com, sweet like candy S-W-E-E-T process.com. All right, Mitch. So it’s an honor to have you here and I’ll just turn to you first and tell us a little bit about what you do. You’re the COO, but you’ve been with the company for a long time. So what’s your role with Kintec and what does Kintec do?

Mitch Dodd: Kintec is a group of companies. We specialize in keeping people active on their feet so they can do more of the things they love. In Vancouver, British Columbia, we have 11 stores that operate retailing footwear and orthotics, helping customers find the right solutions for them. We have a software company, as well as the acquisition that we did two years ago, that we’ll be talking a little bit about today, with Walking Mobility Clinics in Toronto. They have a chain of eight corporate clinics and five franchise clinics. Again, very similar industry with customer orthotics, which was why we lined up and looked at that acquisition. My role is ensuring that the operations work. Our owner has the vision, and I bring them to life working in conjunction with our team of over 120 people across Canada.

John Corcoran: Wow. And so let’s talk about this acquisition. Going into it, did you look beforehand at their systems and processes? Did you realize that you’re going to have some work to do, and in order to unify, not just unify your company in their company, but also you found that these different clinics weren’t even on the same page or weren’t operating the same way?

Mitch Dodd: We’d done some due diligence heading into it. We didn’t have the ability to really get in and meet with much of the team. We’d met with their director of operations. They were held by a private equity group and they wanted to keep the sale relatively quiet. And I had a feeling that their operations were going to be a little bit bumpy and not refined, as refined as we’d worked on ours over the years, because we’ve spent a lot of time, things for inspirations of books, like The E-Myth and softwares like SweetProcess, really refining our systems. But once we got in there, we certainly found out that things were a little bumpier than expected.

John Corcoran: And what was that like? Take me back to that moment. I mean, were there any difficult conversations when you went to your CEO and you’re, "We got a problem here"?

Mitch Dodd: Part of it was just as we were getting going, and as we were digging in and I would meet with their team and travel to clinics and answer questions and ask questions. And as we were looking to put in our new software and our solutions, when I would visit different clinics, I would find out that in clinic A, they would be following one system, clinic B would do it a little differently, clinic C would have another twist on it and that there wasn’t really uniformed processes in place. So, and that went with a number of their operations, which made it more interesting to work on and get the systems in place.

Mitch Dodd: The opportunity that it created is the team was excited to have more cohesion, to have systems, to know where to look up that information, because it can be really frustrating as a team member, when you want to go do a task and you don’t know how to do it, and you don’t know who to ask. Or you just simply make it up and hope there’s not consequences later.

John Corcoran: Yeah. So that actually leads to a question I was going to ask, which was, was it difficult to convince people not just that they should do things in a different way than they had been doing them, but also to start documenting their processes and start using… Or maybe they didn’t have to document the processes because you’d already documented them, but to start using SLPs and following them regularly. Was that a difficult conversation?

Mitch Dodd: As I said, the team was excited for it, but there was still lots of frustration in change. And even simple things like how they have cash on hand to go and buy supplies. We use a process with petty cash and we keep the float in the teller, separate from the petty cash. Data, treated it all the same for accountants and for reconciling things. It was really important that it was done in one way. And anytime you introduce new systems to a team, it’s going to create frustration and you have to be flexible and work with them and have the right documentation so that when you’re not there… This company was 2,700 miles away, which is a four and a half, five hour plane ride. And as much as I was on the ground for maybe five working days a month, there are still 35 other days that I’m not there on the ground and their team that they’re looking to, that’s on the ground, these are all new systems to them and they have to reach back out to us and get the answers and there’re delays.

Mitch Dodd: So all of that creates friction and frustration in the process. And that’s why an acquisition takes a while to really get in place and really get those things working together as one cohesive unit.

John Corcoran: Do you remember if there were any big pitfalls or setbacks along the way as you were bringing this team on board?

Mitch Dodd: Yeah. There were definitely a few as we were going through and introducing them to our new point of sale system. We’d moved it from a co-located server to an Azure server and the VPN or security tunnels were falling and breaking regularly. So you’re trying to get the team to use their new software and it’s not working. And there’s…

John Corcoran: That could be frustrating. Yeah.

Mitch Dodd: Yeah. So it’s harder to get credibility and buy-in from the team and rightfully so things have to work or less it’s not a lot of fun.

John Corcoran: Sure.

Mitch Dodd: The other frustration that I found that was really interesting is we’d read in all of the documents for ourselves. And when we train people here locally, we’re standing right beside them. And it’s in a language that we use internally all the time, sort of our Kintec language, let’s call it. And when somebody is 2,700 miles away and it hasn’t worked within your company and somebody is not sitting there right beside them, what seems like really simple English for one person, isn’t always straightforward to the next person when someone isn’t sitting beside them. So it was a great opportunity for us to go through all of that documentation within SweetProcess and edit it and refine it and make it even more bulletproof than it had been going into.

John Corcoran: So it actually improved your processes further.

Mitch Dodd: Of course. Yeah. Because that’s the great part. So we’ve been using SweetProcess for about three years. And prior to that, we had an internal wiki for anyone that worked through the HTML process. It doesn’t get updated often and it’s certainly not a living document. Where SweetProcess, if someone doesn’t understand, they can suggest edits, we can make edits on the fly, it can be improved as we go, really make it the clearest language for new people when they come in.

John Corcoran: Yeah. And have there been… Do you recall a milestone or a victory or a celebration after you got through bringing this company on and getting them to use the software and to follow the processes? Do you recall any celebrations or is it more of a subtle thing in the sense that not as many challenges come up, not as many balls are dropped, not as many questions come up?

Mitch Dodd: Of course, both things are true. As time goes on, all new systems get better and improved and people continue to work together, but we did celebrate it as well. We did a one-year celebration party with the team last year, when we could still get together and have an in-person event and have lots of fun together. And following that event, we did their first management growth day. We’ve followed the Scaling Up for The Rockefeller Habits systems for years and create individual one page plans for every clinic. And when we walked through that process with those managers and those leaders last year, we got a lot of buy-in and the team really sort of came together. And starting earlier this year, we’ve now internally stopped referring it to it as Walking Mobility and Kintec, and we’ve now refer to it as BC and Ontario, because we’re really trying to come together as one larged.

John Corcoran: What is your top advice for any company that is considering doing an acquisition like this? And what do you… An alternative way of saying that would be, is there any advice you wish you got before this acquisition?

Mitch Dodd: The biggest advice, and I had some of it beforehand, I used some of it, but hindsight’s 20/20, is communication, communication, communication. Communicated seven ways, seven times, and then communicated another seven times. And really worked together to make sure that the communication is going back and forth and that people are really clear. They have a clear vision of what the new culture is going to look like. They have a clear understanding of why it’s going to benefit them and how it’s going to improve their daily lives and who to reach out to when they need help.

Mitch Dodd: And that they need just more detailed and clear answers. So whenever you’re looking at an acquisition, have a really clear communication plan and stick with it at least through the first year, because it’s the most important part of what we do is working with people.

John Corcoran: That’s great. But Mitch Dodd, this has been really interesting to walk through this processes, this acquisition. Where can people go to learn more about you, Kintec and connect with you if they have questions?

Mitch Dodd: Certainly. I’m on LinkedIn under Mitch Dodd. And the company is Kintec, www.kintec.net is the primary company. And then Walking Mobility is the group in Ontario and that is www.walkingmobilityclinic.com.

John Corcoran: Mitch, thanks so much for you.

Mitch Dodd: Thank you.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Process Breakdown Podcast. Before you go, quick question. Do you want a tool that makes it easy to document processes, procedures, and/or policies for your company so that your employees have all the information they need to be successful at their job? If yes, sign up for a free 14 day trial of SweetProcess. No credit card is required to sign up, go to sweetprocess.com, sweet like candy and process like process.com. Go now to sweetprocess.com and sign up for your risk-free 14 day trial.

Owen: Hi, this is Owen, the CEO, and co-founder here at SweetProcess. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast interview, actually, you know what I want you to do? Go ahead and leave us a five star review on iTunes. That way we get more people aware of the good stuff that you get here on this podcast. Again, go on to iTunes and leave us a five star review. Looking forward to reading your review. Have a good day.