When choosing a virtual partner, I should be more careful about who I choose than when I take someone on as an employee.
Jiří Střelec is the founder of the portal Own Way. He connects specialists from various fields and offers his clients expert knowledge in more than twenty areas.
How do you build a knowledge portal? What is most important when building a virtual team? Why is enthusiasm most important? How to sell consulting the right way? And what to look for inspiration in consulting sales?
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TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW
Martin Hurych
Hello.
I'm Martin Hurych and this is... This is Ignition.
Ignition is the beginning of acceleration.
And acceleration is something you need to get moving from a place. By finding this podcast, which I thank you for, you've taken the most important step, the first step, to accelerating yourself.
At Ignition, we share our experiences in B2B business. From business, from innovation, from people management and from other areas.
Today, we're accelerating with Jirka Strelec.
Hi, Jirka.
Jiří Střelec
Hi Martin.
Martin Hurych
Jirka is the founder of a portal of specialists and knowledge that is so big that I wouldn't want to forget anything. Jirka, can you introduce us your project?
Jiří Střelec
I'm sure very happy to, Martin.
First of all, thank you for having me on this podcast because I think our entrepreneurs need some ignition, some momentum to really move forward. We Czechs are very smart. It's worth not being locked in here in the Czech Republic, but to look outside. For that you need knowledge, to be up-to-date and ride the wave of trends. That's one of the reasons why I founded the portal My Own Way. It started 15 years ago and this year on Children's Day we celebrated our 15th anniversary.
The aim was that we give the best knowledge to top executives, managers and all active people who want to develop themselves. I wanted specialists, consultants, lecturers who are excellent in some field to be able to help people who are active and want to learn something. Because those who have the best knowledge can develop themselves, can start the engine in themselves and do things right. That was one of the main reasons why I started the portal.
About 10 years later I found that a whole lot of knowledge that works very well in practice is not being used. That people don't know them, don't know them in some logical chains. I was looking for a way to put the knowledge for management and for specialists, whether they are quality people, IT people and others, into simple logical units so that they could learn it themselves. Ideally at a time when they need it. Not when the HR department thinks. Or the boss is horrified to find out something is missing and says, "Now we need to send people for training". Well yeah, but the training is over and they need that knowledge, and mind you, new and different knowledge, in a week, in 14 days, in a month. At Own Way, we are accommodating that. We put specialists and people together so that people get the knowledge they need when they want it.
Martin Hurych
I said right at the beginning that your portal is an incredibly big deal for me. You've got, if I remember correctly, 21 specialisms on there. You probably can't manage that on your own, can you?
Jiří Střelec
It's absolutely impossible to manage that in one person. I would throw in the history of how it came into being. So far, it's a whole life story. I am originally a quality guy who got the opportunity to be a spokesman and PR manager. So I put one and the other together. I had to practically learn both. And I've discovered one huge advantage. Someone who is a specialist in a field will help the company, but if he has knowledge in the associated field, he is many times more useful to the company. A company is like a living organism. When someone comes to treat the liver, he must not cut the arteries, damage the nervous system, etc. People who realize this are incredibly effective for companies and for lecturing. The idea was to find people who know two or more disciplines. This is, of course, extremely difficult because people like to specialize in a particular thing. I managed to do that. But when I got, I'll be honest, one specialist a year, that was a heroic feat. There's a huge background to it. You can't take anybody who has on their business card that they're a specialist in something. That's not how it works here. You have to have a person who's proven by experience. That's why I came up with the criteria for who to pick. Three criteria emerged. First we do the article together, then we do the offer, and then we have to do the customer together. I know each specialist personally, I know their strengths and weaknesses. We've been through some things together. And only then do we decide whether or not he will be officially in the network of the portal Own Way. That's how the virtual team is created, the background is created, it's been 15 years in the making. Now I'm going to accelerate a little bit, as you say.
How to build a virtual team
Martin Hurych
I would stop at the words "virtual team". It's something that people talk about here, but not everyone has the courage to build a virtual team. What do you think you need to look out for? What works for you, for example? Where have you gotten burned, on the other hand?
Jiří Střelec
I've been burned many times, but that's part of it. That's experience and you can't do without it. What has worked for me? Taking really great care at the beginning of working with a person. Find out what he wants, what he's really a specialist in. Having been through a number of companies and having experience in everything from a temp to a member of top management, I know how those companies work. I've been through companies from a candy factory to an aircraft engine manufacturing company, so I'm able to judge a lot of things. I can't go in depth, like a lawyer or something like that. You have to get to know the person as they are. And more importantly, if he has the activity in him, if he has the motivation to do his job well, that's the alpha and omega. And you can't know that just from discussion. It has to be thrown into practice. So first of all, to know if the person is willing to cooperate and what he is best at. You can tell by the way he talks about his own work. That's the foundation.
The second thing I'm interested in there. Where the person wants to go. If he's a money-oriented person. I'm doing consulting now so I only have to work three days a week and that's all I have to do. Then you quickly find out that the money is more important to him than the client. For me, the success of our clients and helping them comes first. If you help them, the money will always come. It's the value ranking I look for in these people. That's the first choice, absolutely important.
The second is to experience a job with that person, a real situation, a real project, real training. Build a new project or product together. I've come into contact with some of them that way. They said to me, "When can I get on the network? The job can take time. Where are we going to get it?" I said, "Simple, either you bring it, or I bring it, or the portal brings it. That's what we're here for. Or we come up with a product together, then we go half and half, publicize it and get it to market."
For example, my colleague and I have done special marketing for guesthouses. She was the top marketing person in the spa and hotel industry. I, in turn, ran hotels and guesthouses all over the country in marketing. I put in my customer insights and taught the owners to even stand in the shower, close the shower, look inside, etc. She was demonstrating marketing and other practices. That's where we got to know each other. We'll create a new product. It's incredibly important in getting to know a person and figuring out if that synergy, collaboration, chemistry that's often talked about works or not.
Martin Hurych
If I understand correctly, the most important thing for you is that the person is enthusiastic, that you have a consensus on the basic direction of what he wants to do together, and that he's been tested by fire, in a real situation. So is that what a good virtual team is built on?
Jiří Střelec
It certainly does. A virtual team has one disadvantage. We are not in contact with that person all the time. We lose the connection. That's a problem. You need to purposefully build a bond with that person so they don't break. To constantly know what that person's themes are.
Martin Hurych
Does it follow a little bit from what you're saying that I should be more careful about who I choose when I'm choosing a virtual partner than when I'm taking someone on as an employee?
Jiří Strelec
That's an interesting question, you've surprised me quite a bit now. I've never asked it that way in my life.
I would honestly say yes because the account is not that common there. You don't have the opportunity to see this person profiling themselves in different situations every day. And that's exactly the second step, the right direction, the strategy, how you distilled it right. That person may not be exactly the same strategy as me. Just as long as that direction is there to do quality work for clients, to help them. To have some direction of your own, because that's the basis of motivation. That he wants to do something on his own. In consulting, the client must not kick the consultant to learn something new. Those people have to have drive in them. They have to be active on their own, seek out new information, try to implement it, be better and more effective for new clients.
Martin Hurych
So effective virtual team building is finding people who want to sail in the direction you're sailing? That way you don't have to manage him too much and you have some common interest that binds you together? Is there a way to put it that way?
Jiří Střelec
You could put it that way. Even with the risk that the direction is constantly changing. That's exactly why the portal is called Own Way. Everybody has their own path. I'm looking for where we intersect, where we go in the same direction for a certain period of time.
The pitfalls of a virtual team
Martin Hurych
You've listed a few things here where it works for you. When did you get totally burnt?
Jiří Střelec
I got burned in the different quality of service delivery to clients. That's why I'm very careful about it. What's standard for me is not standard for many advisors. Even if they were doing consulting for, say, the VP level and top management. That still doesn't mean they're providing the same level of service. I'll give you an example.
I have a certain way of training and consulting reports that I hand off to clients. There is always the important stuff that was done. That's the bottom line. We have a few extra points in there that even the competition doesn't have. We have to have practical exercises in there that people have tried, and maximum pressure to make practice prevail over theory. That's what we're specifically putting out there and looking for a way to do that.
And the second thing is, there are no vague recommendations. I try to make the recommendations with my colleagues so that when the manager reads them, he can almost copy paste the responsible person, which sometimes he already has a recommendation from us, including a deadline, and throw that into the task book. Make it as practical as possible for the company and they know what to do with it.
Martin Hurych
I understand that. That's your quality.
You said that not everybody has the same quality ladder. Which of the three things we talked about - vision, enthusiasm, and trial by fire - stunk in this particular case? What did you underestimate?
Jiří Strelec
There are situations where you can't test everything. I didn't have enough time.
For the network to work, it needs to balance several things. One thing is contracts, where we will verify, learn from each other and beyond. So I have to get contracts.
On the other hand, I have to pick the right people and test them.
But then there's another level. I've had a number of customers in almost 30 years of practice who have come to my standard and know what we can do. If I want to use those people somewhere, I have to bring them up to a certain level so that the quality doesn't go down.
Into all of this, of course, comes the life issues of the individual specialist, from the mundane, like having a baby, building a house, to when they run out of jobs, get more jobs, they have to prioritize. That's another dimension that's inherently there.
And now there's the factor you're pointing out. It's the virtual team. It's hard to balance all of that to keep people motivated and actively working on contracts.
Martin Hurych
So how do you do it? Do you prefer to have a surplus of contracts and risk taking on someone ad-hoc who you're not that proven? Or do you prefer to build your network knowing that you don't have quality work for some consultants at the moment?
Jiří Střelec
That's another shot in the dark. Of course, I like to have a surplus of assignments. When there are contracts, it's better to work with people. They have a benchmark and, now I'm going to say it ugly, I have a yardstick in my hands to improve that quality. When a person has the germ and is able to push themselves further, when they see the same thing in their colleagues, it's a natural pressure to raise the standard, let me put it bluntly.
On the other hand, if I feel from the beginning that the quality might be bad, I always make it so that there are two of us there, that I'm there. I pick the job so that if the guy fails and I don't have him vetted, I'll even finish it myself and the client won't know it. But it's challenging.
And of course, when there's a surplus of jobs, I'd rather not take some jobs than put a problem person in.
Martin Hurych
I can think of one thing. To what extent does your quality background translate into your micro-management and remote team management?
Jiří Střelec
Here you would definitely get a different answer from me and my colleagues. My colleagues would say that I'm too much of an interloper. I'm fully aware of that, but I'm also fully aware that when I recommend someone to the top management level of my client's international company, that they have to be really top-notch, there is no excess to do there.
Martin Hurych
I understand that. Ultimately, you've got your name on it.
Jiří Střelec
It's exactly as you say. I think I've moved on a little bit. Everybody has to evolve. I have to evolve too. I've had those kicks from different sides, even from my colleagues. I've been subtly warned, "George would be good" and "George leave it alone". For example, I got a virtual assistant a year ago, so I'm transferring a lot of things to her now. I'm starting to create more of a back office for the network and for the virtual team so that some of the services are automated. We're automating jobs, we're automating communication between us and our clients. If the background is good, the specialist can focus on the job, and that's what I want. So that he is a pro at the thing, and the things that are simple run automatically, or someone who has mastered them does them well and provides us with service. We can then dedicate ourselves to growing the business.
Martin Hurych
Let me stop with one more thing. Your portal offers 21 specialisations. The general direction pushed is a narrow specialization, a niche market and there you build a name ... You're swimming very much against the tide. What makes you think that? And how does this work as a business strategy?
Jiří Střelec
It's working very well. Because my trend is to bring specialists together and look for synergies at the boundaries of the different specialisations. It has its own logic. If you take a manager... A manager will be managing, for example, a development department, so he has to have a background in development, he has to know agile methodologies, and so on, that's already a foundation today. But he's leading a team. If he's leading a team, he has to have a background in HR. If he's got a person there, he has to have a background in psychology, otherwise he's not going to get along. When he puts more people together, it's already a team, it's already a social group, he has to have a background in sociology, otherwise he's not going to manage it again, and he's not going to be successful. Business today is getting harder and harder and more complex. The way business was beautiful after the revolution, it won't be today. The market was hungry. Today it's ravenous. We're spoiled, everything is more complicated. We have to be more professional. A manager has to be much more competent than he used to be 20 years ago or 10 years ago. I'm trying to put specialists together like that. We're looking for synergies, where to connect disciplines, where to do the best possible result for our client for better money and in less time. And that's worked out great for me.
When I analyze what the client needs, I really reach into x number of specialties. I've been through them myself. What came out of that is what people find on the website. Today, I tell myself that I'm a solutions architect because I know the company from the last warehouseman to the board member. That allows me to understand people at each level. But I couldn't do it if I didn't have the background of my colleagues. I learn from them, too. I learn from psychology, I learn from sociology. By doing jobs together, I know exactly what these people are good at, and then I can say to customers in a business meeting, "Here comes Vojta, he's great at this."
That's exactly what happened now. On Tuesday, we were dealing with Polish workers joining a client's production. I already knew that this topic was not easy, because managers would have to start managing social groups a little differently. When a company has a group of Polish workers, Czech workers, Bulgarian workers, it's more complicated to manage. I immediately pointed out some problematic situations that can arise and I recommended Vojta immediately. That was on Tuesday. And on Monday Vojta was already preparing them for what they had to do.
For me, it's not upstream. For me, it's mainstream. Companies need synergies.
How to make a consultative sale
Martin Hurych
I understand what you are saying. On the other hand, times are very fast, people are looking for shortcuts, quick solutions, instant improvements. How do you combat that? What you're explaining here is a relatively complex thing to explain.
And I'll add one more dimension to it. You said your portfolio basically includes everything from confectionery to hotels to custom machinery. How do you adapt quickly to a broad portfolio of industries? What's the client and sales approach? You said you sell yourself as air, ideas, stories. The trend is instant, now, tomorrow, cook, I want to see results!!!
How's that working out for you?
Jiří Střelec
Yes, managers need shortcuts fast. They need to secure funding for companies. They need to make people work. But shortcuts don't work in real business management. Everything is connected to everything. That's my quality advantage. I've set up processes in a number of companies, right from the confectionery to the aviation. I know how the processes work. I know that more important than the processes is the link between the processes. When the linkage doesn't work, it causes the biggest losses in companies.
When I'm selling our services, I'll let the person tell me where they see the problem. To me, there are usually already links to that problem, what could be where in that company. That's where the experience of the quality guy helps me. I choose the questions I ask him to find out where the real problem is. Most clients won't describe what's really bothering them. That's my job. I'm half analyst, half salesman, half architect. I show the solution in the first meeting. What happens in many cases is that they immediately say in the meeting, "Well, you're right, it all fits together. We didn't think of this, this is more important than what we wanted". I say, "Yes, then it's dealt with that way". I immediately draw a diagram of how to solve it. Then it's down to what to do, who to do that particular stage, etc.
It helps me tremendously that I have been through different companies. Of course I can't do everything, I don't know everything, and that's why I have colleagues. For example, when we dealt with contracts for the state sector, I took my colleague Petr Hlušička, who has a lot of experience in municipalities. I am an entrepreneurial predator, and an entrepreneurial predator is not the best negotiator in the state administration. Petr, who is also a psychologist and in HR, can ground me. Huge advantage we get that way.
Oh, and selling air. I put in 9 years of public, relations and marketing. My boss taught me that we sell air. It's all about selling the idea. If an idea, an idea is interesting to a client, they'll go for it. Whoever sells the air has to create a realistic picture of what kind of result the person will get. Then he is able to sell it and those people are able to give money for that air. But it's terribly hard work. It looks awfully easy when you put it that way.
Martin Hurych
So tell us, how do you do it? We talked about the fact that we need shortcuts, quick guides and so on. Come on, give us a quick tutorial...
Jiří Střelec
First of all, read the company perfectly and analyze the sentences that the person on the other side is saying to me. Every word is a picture of the idea he has in his head. At that moment, I have an idea what thoughts are going through his head. Then I look for the associated problem that's supposed to be connected to it. I start drawing, visualizing and asking the person if that's it. That way, I can immediately identify the problem that's there. And then I have to create a picture of the solution. For him, in his words. That's selling the air. I don't want to sugarcoat it. At that point, I draw and describe the problems and show what's important. I have to show him what the solution will do for him and quantify it. Which is hard in soft skills. In soft skills, people think that communication trainers are well-spoken people who will sugarcoat any situation and the result won't show. A qualitative person knows that if you send an IT person to do communication training, that the result has to show up, for example, in the way he writes emails. So I focus on that and say, "Yes I want him to write those emails differently." I'll show him at the training and maybe even have him bring his emails. I project that air into real situations of the participants and the client. That's what I paint for them, that's what I put in the proposal afterwards. Then people realize how that air can flow through their business, that it's worth giving that money.
Martin Hurych
This was a great summary. I'll dare to generalize. This is a recipe for the consulting business in general. Not just for the self-selling consultant. Anyone in the audience or audience selling anything in a consultative way, even if it's more tangible, this is exactly the way to follow. Right?
Jiří Střelec
That's right. And if he adds visualization, drawing, if he learns how companies work, if he adds other disciplines, his value in the marketplace will grow.
Martin Hurych
I understand that.
Jirka, thank you for the talk, it was very useful, there was a lot of information that I believe will be used by our listeners. If people want to find you somewhere, where can I go to see you? Where can they find you? Where can they contact you?
Jiří Střelec
Just type my name into a search engine and I'll show up on the first links on Google or Seznam. Use "Jiri Strelec" or "Custom Path". You can find me there, and you can find my phone number. And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. We are not a completely closed group. We try to help people. If you have any questions, feel free to call, write and we can discuss it.
Martin Hurych
That was Jirka Střelec from the portal Vlastní cesta. If this episode has sparked a fire in you, I'd love it if you subscribe to future episodes, either on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to check out my website at www.martinhurych.com, where you'll also find a transcript of this episode.
Fingers crossed and best wishes for success.
(edited and condensed)
(automatically translated by DeepL, free version)