42: Navigating the Path to Efficiency- with Dave Crysler

Meet Dave CryslerDave Crysler is the principal operations consultant at the Crysler Club and host of the Everyday Business Problems Podcast. Entering entrepreneurship after having spent nearly 20 years working for a publicly traded corporation, Dave quickly realized there was a tremendous need within mid-market manufacturing and distributions businesses to leverage systems that optimize planning, people, processes, and technology. Dave developed his operations framework to create systems that reduce friction and free up resources to maximize profitability.Given all of your experiences and in so many different environments, what have you seen lights people up? And then the inverse of that, what freaks people out the most? I would say kind of as a general answer to both of them, the thing that really lights people up is when you listen to 'em. And that sounds so simplistic, but that is the reality. Oftentimes from a leadership perspective, we think that we're listening to our teams. But the reality is that we're not. And when I was going into these organizations, and even today, if I go into an organization today, that is still kind of the number one thing that I hear from folks that are doing the heavy lifting.“Nobody's listening to us. Nobody's listening to what is really slowing us down. Nobody's listening to us to remove those roadblocks.” And so I would say, very simplistically, that is the thing that lights people up. By and large, people don't want to come in and have a bad day, right? People don't want to come in and make mistakes.Is there anything that's really exciting for you with where the future might be taking us? I'm thinking of AI automation and all of the other things that are happening in the space of technology. Is there anything you can predict or something you're really excited about? There's a lot of buzz right now, not just around AI, but around the kind of no code or low code connectivity and automation.You've got tools like Zapier which has kind of been a market leader for the last few years, but one that I really love beyond Zapier is called Make. It's just make.com. There's a lot more flexibility and it actually has connectivity to a lot more kinds of platforms natively. You also have the ability to do webhooks and custom APIs and all kinds of stuff.I would tell people as a general rule of thumb is don't go backward, right? Start in the correct direction. And what I mean by that is don't look for ways to automate until you've already gone through, documented your process and looked for things you can eliminate.Because why are we going to automate something that ultimately we could have eliminated? It's one of those areas where I see people saying they want to implement this particular technology, but not thinking about it from the standpoint of efficiency. Then let's look for the tool that is the best to automate the execution of that process flow.And so much more… Connect with Dave!LinkedInThe Crysler CompanyFacebookInstagramConnect with the broads!Connect with Erin on LinkedIn for web-based solutions to your complex business problems!Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and...