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welcome to your favorite podcast for the
industrial water trader
of course we know that is scaling up h2o
i’m honored to be your host for that
podcast trace blackmore
and folks this is going to be a really
fun
show today we’re going to think about
things a little bit
differently but before i get into the
interview
i just want to thank all the people that
joined me
last week for the hang that we did
of course that’s something we do every
month or so for industrial water traders
to get together to meet new people to
talk about new items
and just get out in the industry and of
course
you can do that from your own office or
your own home you don’t have to leave to
do that and you
meet hopefully dozens of new friends
on that hang we’re gonna have another
hang
on june 10th so if you
missed this one or you just can’t wait
to be on another one
you can go ahead and register today you
can reserve your spot
by going to scaling up h2o.com
forward slash hang another thing that
i am looking so afford to
is the association of water technologies
technical training seminars taking place
in annapolis maryland folks normally i
am telling you you need to register you
need to come see me
but here’s the deal because of
restrictions
there are caps of how many people can
register and attend
this event and all of those
registrations has been
met but here’s the thing you might not
be
out of luck if you go to awt.org
and go on their waiting list if they
open up more spots or somebody is not
able
to attend you will be able to
attend it’s one of my favorite things
that i do
each and every year i love teaching
the craft that my father taught to me
i love seeing all the other people that
do the same type of job that i do
each and every day so hopefully i will
see
you there but again it may not be too
late
be sure to get on that waiting list well
folks as i mentioned
we’re going to challenge the way we
think today
and my guest today that’s what he does
he goes into companies and he tries to
get
the companies to think differently i’m
really
excited for this interview please
welcome
bob nemich
my lab partner today is bob anemic of
twist think how are you doing bob i’m
doing well good morning and uh thanks
for the opportunity to connect
yeah i appreciate you coming on the show
i think this is going to be a really
fun interview and i want to make sure
the scaling up
nation knows who we are talking to today
so do you mind telling us a little bit
about yourself
sure i guess a quick thumbnail sketch
born in detroit raised and schooled
in the great state of michigan and
uh coming out of university with an
engineering degree
and then an mba went on to
spend time in the corporate world
for 17 years connected
to the automotive industry in both north
america and europe
two great tier one suppliers one by the
name of
prince corporation that in the mid 90s
was then acquired by a great public
company by the name of johnson controls
so
i had the benefit of learning and
growing
and leading in both of those companies
and then
after 17 or so years
jumped out to help frame
a startup by the name of twist think
so in 2001 this uh
tiny team of five as a professional
service started to engage in
helping organizations innovate
accelerate and grow
and uh in the blink of an eye all the
kids are grown and fly out of the nest
and twist think is months away from
uh celebrating uh our 20th year
so that in uh
a very few uh comments
is uh a little bit about myself
20 years in the blink of an eye you are
not kidding
yeah yeah i think it’s fair to say you
know as you get
as you get older and you start you you
really start to
realize more so now as i start to see
grandchildren arrive on the scene
just how quickly
the world turns and life moves
and it does feel like a blink of an eye
that team of
five has now grown to a team of
50. and just maybe a comment one of
one of my lessons in the corporate
experience
of the automotive industry at those two
great
companies already mentioned was
the power of bringing together the skill
of great design
industrial designers by training the
creative
right brain you might say bringing that
skill together
with another great skill and that of
technology
or in our language uh electronic or
electrical engineers
the the talented left brain so
the experience gained in the automotive
world that’s now been
delivered in the professional service
world of twist think was
the left brain and the right brain
coming together
and uh serving as one
and so that’s what twist think has been
built on
and has grown by and uh
continues to serve companies uh
in those key areas of innovating
and accelerating or moving faster to
market
and ultimately what you and i and
i’m sure every one of your listeners is
uh
accountable for and that is growth
and grow grow grow uh pre-pandemic and
now
even more so post-pandemic is
uh something that i think we can all
uh relate to and align on you know
something
that a lot of people in our industry are
dealing with and i know it’s not unique
to us
but i know about us so that’s what i’m
talking about is we’ve got
four generations working together at the
same time
and we’ve got some very smart engineers
that are
getting ready to retire that are just
incredibly intelligent
have all this information and then we
have millennials coming up into the
workforce
and they of course know technology
better
and the issue that we have is nobody
speaks the same language
they use different tools to get the job
done
what advice do you have around making
sure we’re speaking better and we’re
getting
things to where they need to get to
without having all this extra stuff
that’s going on
between the generations yeah it’s a
generational
issue for sure and it’s a a skill
issue for sure too uh the skill of
design
if you know that great talent in your
experience or your listeners know that
skill and
and their experience is very much
different than
the skill of engineering and even when
we
started as a firm the first
two or three years were really
our bumping along
cultivating and trying to understand the
language
of the other teammate and the
process of the other teammate
that being great design and great
technology you know and
uh i’d say it took us a few years to
understand and respect uh the process
but uh once you go through that
uh and once we went through that i would
say
that’s when we saw the power of
one team truly
delivering results for the clients that
we’ve
worked so hard to serve for a nearly 20
years
so when you talk about even now the
generational
transition that’s occurring in a lot of
organizations
and the older generation
learning more about the millennial
generation
and the approach to technology
and then vice versa how does a younger
team
learn all of those uh secrets of the
trade
from leaders that have been bouncing
around in it for 40
ish kind of years right when when that
when the patients can be applied to
both sides of the table and come
together as one well then
that’s when an organization uh i would
argue
simply from a teaming perspective is
set up to win there is nothing
more powerful in any organization
than an aligned team but
and i know you know this as you’ve been
around the block a few times in a few
years is
there’s nothing harder to
maintain and cultivate than the power
of a great team it takes a ton of time
and
and work and requires a lot of patience
and grace along the way
i definitely agree grace needs to be
extended in everything that we do
because there’s just nothing stopping a
team that
is fully aligned yeah now to encourage
you
and you know even as i reflect on for
our firm you know this week
is i believe our 24th week
of you know leaning more on remote
work than our traditional in the office
work
and uh you know i think our team in in a
way
is chomping at the bit to be able to
return to
what we once knew is that normal office
setting
but we’re trying to you know embrace
safety
and the various constraints applied on
us
in this operating environment but the
encouragement has been
you can still even in a remote work
fashion using the technology that we
have available to us
is still possible to maintain
a strong team culture
and for us where our team collaborating
together
is very very important to what we
serve our clients with we’ve still been
able to use the various
tools that we’re all now pretty familiar
with to
maintain team and high-powered
collaboration
yeah i think that was definitely one of
the most positive things that has come
from us experiencing the pandemic the i
don’t think anybody knew all the stuff
that they could do
by not going into the office but
definitely business didn’t stop
and i think we took that as an
opportunity to get better
yeah it’s all about growth and
we’re all growing in different ways
in this current economy and with the
challenges we face
and uh you know change can be hard but
uh
change is good and you can’t grow
without change that is that is the
bottom line
yeah well let’s talk a little bit about
that because
one of the topics that you speak so well
on is
on innovation excellence versus
operational excellence can you tell us a
little bit about
that and what we need to know yeah so um
i appreciate you mentioning that we have
a client in the south by the name of
milliken
a very successful private company
in the chemical textile space
a company that i’ve respected for
years and their founder roger milliken
has a statement that’s you know even
today
though he’s passed away is framed and
hanging on
the wall of their r and d
campus and and the statement goes
operational
excellence secures the present
innovation excellence secures the
future and when i saw that for the first
time i was like
wow he’s singing our song at twist think
because we as a firm for 20 years have
been
serving clients in their pursuit of
a greater innovation excellence
and the outcomes that follow from that
and it’s interesting if you do any
research on
millikin is here’s an organization that
back in the late 80s
when there was a new award being
distributed by our
reigning president and government called
the malcolm
baldrige award milliken
was one of the first recipients and that
award was
really a very much in line with
uh what what we might all just
collectively call
operational excellence and how an
organization’s
operations were led and guided and
driven
via lean manufacturing and all of
the other uh kind of battle cries that
are so associated with operations in
terms of production
and safety and quality so here’s a
here’s a company that
again was nationally recognized for
their strength
in great operations they had solid
footing there but
they also had a solid footing
and respect and a process for
innovation excellence too and
quite honestly our long-term purpose
as a professional service team is
helping organizations stand on
two feet rather than simply
standing and relying solely on the
footing of operational excellence
only and you know not our data but
uh harvard business review uh probably
four years ago now did a pretty
comprehensive survey
of public and private companies coast to
coast
thousands and came back with
what to me is still an astonishing data
point
that though many if not all companies
would tout
some level of innovation
esprit de corps the proof
of companies really doing any serious
innovation and having a process to guide
them and lead them and direct them
was only nine percent so you’re like wow
even if that survey is off a little bit
and you round it up to
uh 20 there’s still
uh a pretty big chasm associated with
organizations that have a true
commitment and a true
practice to pursuing innovation
excellence and so
another way that sometimes i’ll share
who is swift think and what are we
trying to do
we’re trying to make an impact in that
nine percent
we’re trying to get more companies who
are perhaps
uh under the water line and operating
solely in the space of commodity we’re
trying to give them
a chance to get above the water line
into the
fresh air of innovation and
if i just go on i would say operational
excellence
is pursued through the wise practice and
training and understanding of lean
manufacturing
and there’s hundreds of tools and
methods that can be used
within any organization who’s on the
hunt for lean
and on the hunt for operational
uh improvement or excellence
well on the innovation side there’s
another proven process
and you know i wish i could see all your
listeners and
ask them to raise your hand if your
company
has invested in another process
just as good if not better than lean
that has tools and methods and stage
gates
to guide and direct innovation efforts
and that process
is referred to as human-centered design
or sometimes even design thinking
come on raise your hand if your
organization is committed there too
well i’ll just tell you from my
experience you know i have taken
dozens of courses and had consultants
come in
on operation you know how do we do what
we do
better more efficiently how do we make
sure that we’re not repeating efforts
everything is streamlined we have done
zero when it comes to innovation
yeah and there lies what you might say
as
the problem or the opportunity and and
trace i’ll be honest
i just walked out of a meeting with
a fortune 500 leader
and this topic of supply chain
management
and everything that this leader and his
company is doing to lean
into that especially in light of the
pandemic
the change that’s going on there and
it’s all good
and appropriate activity that smart
companies
do invest in but then the topic came up
on the innovation excellence side
and why and how they’re struggling
to get their footing there they’re
trying but they’ve been trying for a
long time
and they’re still not seeing any
process and so as we unpack that he
confessed
what i think a lot of leaders struggle
with
and that is we’re not going after
innovation excellence
because it’s far easier to just keep
turning this is his words not mine just
keep
turning the crank the the flywheel they
call it
the flywheel you know and there’s a
thousand other
kind of metaphors that we’re all
familiar with and this company is uh you
know at a crossroads
in their uh run and where where they’re
headed
and what they might look like and this
company
um again this is not made up for your
podcast
this is a conversation 45 minutes ago
where they’re grappling with uh
creating the dynamic internally to
answer
what’s next how do we appropriately plan
and grow post the pandemic
how do we appropriately grow
in this age of digital transformation
i wish i would have been smart enough to
say hey you need to join me
on a podcast that i’m having with uh
with trace in uh in a few minutes and
how fitting his commentary i
think is uh to this conversation to you
and to your listeners of scaling up
that this matter is in fact post the
pandemic
even more important and
becoming more urgent well you’ve got
everybody
curious i we’ve done several shows on
lean manufacturing
all over the operational realm but
no shows done on innovation i know
everybody’s wondering
what do we do how do we bring
some of these tools that you know about
that we don’t know about one what are
they
and how do we start implementing them
yeah so like anything uh you know change
takes
you know you gotta build momentum so you
gotta start to walk
before you can run but if your listeners
are not familiar with human centered
design
as a process well then pop the power of
the internet we’ll bring that to
all of our desks during this call or
post this call so
there’s uh one action that can be taken
there’s certainly a
studying and research and and reading
that can be done
i think it it takes a c-suite
commitment just like
it takes a c-suite commitment to a
pursue
a malcolm baldrige award or
operationally
uh shift the the cultural dynamic of any
business so
you know it it starts at the top it
starts with
the leader in the driver’s seat to
demonstrate and and create
a resolve to again be a smart business
that stands
on two feet rather than hopping
uh on the footing of uh operational
excellence alone and
and maybe just you know one that’s a
great question
too a podcast like this isn’t long
enough
in order to fully unpack it but here’s
one skill
that i’ve seen for my going on
40 years of business
engagement that i i think is still not
uh appreciated and understood and
leveraged
and that skill is the skill of
design or industrial design
and and i’ve been uh promoting and
arguing and fighting for
that skill to be plugged into any
organization
to some appropriate level whether it be
a manufacturer
or a service company or even
the changing world of education that
having some access to industrial design
is a tremendous way
for a company to raise the bar
in their pursuit of innovation or
innovation
excellence and if nothing else for your
listeners
who maybe don’t have access to that
skill
or are not familiar with it i would
certainly
inspire them hopefully i am inspiring
them to
get after that and to get after it
quickly
so let me ask i know you have worked
with
many many companies can you talk about
one that wasn’t doing much with
innovation
they’ve worked with you they’ve learned
some of these tools you’ve helped them
hone those skills
what were they doing before and now what
are they receiving
after yeah i can share one example
of a 100 year old private company
mid market that came to us
with the desire and the resolve already
to try and use the mega trend of digital
transformation
to transform and disrupt
their business and even their
competition
so they you know this digital
transformation
mega trend is one that’s impacting
uh every organization for over a decade
we’ve been deeply immersed in it
and the power of it is one that
i think even your listeners in the
market space
of if we just say water are
fully aware of and you know terms like
artificial intelligence
and internet of things and connectivity
and the age of user experience that’s
what we’re living in now
those were those are all uh kind of
facets that we’re using to help
companies
get above that water line so this
company
a flexco by name a mining company based
in
and operating in the mining industry
was resolved to trying to
create new user experiences
via digital transformation and so
our engagement with them started
no surprise with the process of
human-centered design
and there’s you know for us there’s four
steps in that process
discovery analyze create and develop
i share that to highlight that there’s
steps and that it is a process because
so
often innovation is misunderstood
to being just brainstorming sessions
either on campus or off campus and that
is not how you innovate
and that is surely not how you answer
the question of
what’s next so flexco was kind enough
to allow us to lead them through
those uh four steps first and
and the and the value there was it
allowed us to create a clear
target for what their
user experience and product strategy
needed to be before creating anything
from a hardcore engineering perspective
and so
we traveled the globe we met with
countless
stakeholders within their industry and
we got to
the pain points and the
opportunities that digital
transformation
deployed against their product line
could create
for the customers that they’re working
so hard to serve
and so that effort which you might say
extended four to six months
clearly painted the target for what
their
internet of things or aiot platform
should look like and be capable of and
then
we didn’t merely just hand the playbook
to them we actually converted that for
them
and so in a in a period of a time that
followed we created the platform
that now allows flexco
to manage and monitor their
their product via the power of
the internet so it’s kinda turns their
offerings on its head because they’re
able to
monitor their product and proactively
respond to a mind
to replace their product before
that mine runs into a situation
where the conveyor belt needs to stop
until the conveyor belt is repaired
so it shifted the
user experience and it even shifted the
business model
that flexco is using to serve their
customers
globally and that’s the power of
digital transformation and i’m
encouraged
to even share this is happening in the
water industry
uh and i’m i’m sure your listeners are
tracking it
but we have a non-profit who is
water uh focused called charity water
that deploys pumps in
regions of the world where there’s no
access to clean drinking water
even they in recent years
in collaboration with us have built a
platform
that allows those pumps deployed in
very unique and hard to get to
regions of the globe even those pumps
are now being
managed and serviced
so that clean drinking water can
get into the communities that so
desperately need it there’s over a
billion people
on planet earth today that have no
access to clean drinking water charity
water
as well as many other water non-profits
are trying to make a dent in that number
and digital transformation is
clearing the way you say
now more than ever we need to take
advantage
of the digital age so with everything
going on with everything we’re learning
from working at home
uh from the pandemic how do we combine
what we’re learning now to being more
innovatively excellent can i say that is
that how you say that
innovation excellence is kind of the two
words from that
quote i cited earlier from roger
milliken
innovation excellence secures the future
and
and again the spirit of that quote is
yep it’s smart to think about today but
you also got to be looking
out and the only way to look out is
through
a great process and a great commitment
to understanding the changing needs of
any company’s clients that they’re
serving
digital is just helping
to fuel user experiences
and that fuel is being provided by
connectivity and data so we all know
about the growing trend of
connecting and driving more activity
in the cloud right not a day goes by
that you probably don’t hear
some reference to the cloud and the
cloud is
a key part of digital transformation
and it’s how do you take all of that key
data
like flexco now is and then
act upon it or provide the data
in a useful way for the stakeholders
that they’re trying to serve
in the mining industry interestingly i
i’ve i heard a leader’s site
that before the pandemic digital
transformation was in the top 15
of their kind of corporate strategic
initiatives
you know and he was kind of hinting you
know more in the 13 14
15 spot is that post pandemic
or as we’re working our way through the
pandemic
it’s number two and uh you know
this leader went on to say that you know
gone are the days where
you can just ask members of your team
hey
get on a plane and fly across the
country and get to that customer or get
to that location where our product
is being used and and service it
those days post the pandemic are totally
different
and so digital transformation
is allowing edge devices to be deployed
in such a way on a pump in ethiopia
so that as that pump is operating and as
that pump
is wearing ai is providing
data both at the edge and in the cloud
that would indicate
the useful health and life of that pump
and rather than it just breaking
and remaining dysfunctional for
a matter of months it can now be
serviced
and continue to perform the way that
it’s so
needed to do so and i think you know
there’s stories like that
that are being written at high speed
right now
again when people ask me how do i get
above the water line i feel trapped
you know my answer is one embrace the
process of human centered design
like now and two explore
and discover how digital transformation
might allow you to create a new user
experience
for your key stakeholders and i believe
that those two together
will shoot people upward
so that they can get to a position of
leadership
and competitive strength and ultimately
increase growth as you’ve been working
with clients and sharing these ideas
what’s one of the biggest ah-ha moments
one of your customers have had
shoot it really worked
and the company i cited in the example
you know
anyone listening to this feel free to
reach out to them directly but
what we hear and by the way i i spoke at
an event
with hundreds of people in the great
state of michigan
almost a year ago and i asked them
before i started
the question of hey raise your hand when
it comes to lean manufacturing and your
awareness and commitment and practice
and everybody’s hand in the room went up
this is hundreds of liters and then i
said okay
now raise your hand if your organization
is aware committed
trained and practicing another great
process called human-centered design
not one hand in the room went up
and you’re like wow what an opportunity
and what a shame
and so some of the ahas that we get the
benefit
of experience with our clients
is their own getting to see it
and see the outcomes that are driven
through hcd and strategic visualization
and high-powered collaboration
and boy you know just speaking on behalf
of
the great team of 50 behind me there
there’s nothing more
exciting than to work with a client
and allow them to see it come together
in
that fashion up front right hcd
occurs before you do hardcore
product development and so to allow them
to see
and experience that and then go through
the hardcore
product development because connecting
a device to the cloud that’s
buried a mile uh underground
in a mine in australia you know that
that that isn’t easy stuff but it’s
technically feasible and
and when you get there and then you have
the benefit of watching that
organization
announce to the industry in february
here’s our new offering called elevate
and here’s how it’s transforming us
and the clients that we serve so they’re
in the domain of commercialization
that’s inspiring stuff for us as a team
working so hard but
it’s also kind of inspiring to see
their eyes light up by
doing something different
and uh you know vince lombardi was
quoted
uh years ago this is in the 60s when he
was
the dominant force granted this is a
sporting
analogy but his quote i think applies to
what we’re talking about on this call
and it was
there’s joy in the creating
not maintaining and i think
you know when you get to go through
innovation excellence
alongside of the footing of operational
excellence
there’s wind winds there’s there’s kind
of joyful
activity that then happen on both sides
what’s the most common mistake that your
clients
make as they’re trying to innovate most
companies
make the mistake of assigning a small
team internally
and sticking them in a cubicle space
somewhere on their corporate campus
and and basically
tasking them with yeah do a little bit
of that while you continue to also
you know remain connected to our quote
unquote operational activity
and anything that even that great team
would try and
generate gets consumed by the culture of
uh the organization so it’s like they
can’t even
get liftoff and that’s a mistake
that occurs you know wrapped with that
is you know trying to do it all
in house you know wrapped with that is
you know
not invented here you know unless they
come up with it
it’s the only way that they can advance
you know not having
fresh eyes way into it and that as i
mentioned already
not even having the power of
industrial design to visualize
hey here’s what our our our current
portfolio of
products or services look like so you
know the power of putting stuff up on a
wall
to drive alignment and collaboration
within an organization is rarely
taken advantage of i can’t tell you how
many companies
i’ve met with yeah they have their
product catalog on their website
and they have their you know catalogs
that they hand out at trade shows but
you know when asking individuals or
leaders of a company
so show me where are all of your
products and services visualized in one
arena they can’t do it
and then they they just wonder you know
why they can’t build
momentum in uh this domain
of a new products and
new services and mega trends like
digital or they struggle for why
their culture isn’t thriving on the
innovation excellent side
and there’s nothing like visualizing
information and putting it up
and then challenging you know
innovational teams
innovation teams or even the c-suite
or the board of directors here’s who we
are
and here’s what we look like today and
here’s what we hope to look like in
three years
simon sinek wrote a book called start
with why and he talks about
you know let people know why your
company
is in existence how do we tie the why
into innovation well the y is uh
you know really the starting point isn’t
it and the why
is uh what’s the why behind
having digitally connected pumps
in africa and getting to the heart of
the matter and back to your
earlier a generational question and
comment
the great talent that all of us are
trying to secure
to grow in the future is really
hungry and passionate for
more of the why not less of it
and part of my belief when it comes to
strategic visualization and
even visualizing the why alongside of
the future
product or innovation
portfolio that those are critically
important
when trying to capture and hire
and inspire the the great talent that
we’re all running after
the folks rolling out of university
today with their undergrad
or their postgrad and their they’re all
more hungry
for a lot of what
cynic is uh speaking to and writing
about
and we as organizations that are
are trying to grow there’s value in
being able to secure great talent when
they can see the why of what you might
look like
in three to five years and really
sense that that organization is
committed to that cost
it’s not just in an annual report
or an annual strategic plan
what’s the one thing you want to make
sure people
get from our interview today maybe
they’re curious
around this process of human-centered
design and
want to go investigate more that would
be
one that i hope they get from today
i think what i’ve said many times over
the years that
any organization is benefited from
having access to the skill of
industrial design is
another takeaway that hopefully
they’re intrigued by and then the third
is
you know the the power of digital
transformation
to create new user experiences and i
cited charity water but again for your
listeners
on scaling up there are many that
we’re serving that have a foot
in the water industry that are
working hard to try and leverage that
mega trend
again in the spirit of creating new user
experiences
well i know i’m thinking a little bit
differently than when we started
this conversation i’m sure our listeners
are as well
i’ll make sure that i put some
information on many of the things that
you mentioned on our show notes page so
that will be very easy to find
but i’m not quite done with questions
for you yet i have a few lightning round
questions
if you are up for it yeah let’s go for
it
all right so you now have the ability to
go back in time and talk to your former
self
on your first day as
a consultant working with people making
them
more innovatively excellent what advice
would you give yourself
don’t be afraid to change hold yourself
to what i would say bold goals
not incremental goals and then i think
certainly like many listening you know
the pandemic is a great wake-up call
just for enjoying the moment
and being reminded that
every day is a gift
and boy that’s what i i wish i could go
back to
the early 80s and kick that into my own
head
in a more clear and robust fashion
what are the last few books that you’ve
read oh man
i’ll say one that we’re reading uh as a
team we have a book club
is so you want to talk about race you
know
this focus and initiative within our
team started well before what we’ve seen
uh in our nation and kind of highlighted
in
many ways uh in recent months
and uh that book is is is just creating
uh more awareness and more
discussion and certainly
and most importantly and this is tied to
human-centered design
more empathy for uh something that
for our business i’m not even speak on
the nation’s behalf
but for our business is critically
critically
important right now we cannot claim to
be
innovation excellent without
a real strong measure and dynamic
to diversity and so that’s what’s
driving
us into that book and and certainly
what’s unfolded
across the country is helping us to uh
be smarter in that domain too and man we
i’m so uh thankful that we have a team
that doesn’t just look at that and kind
of say yeah
whatever and book club
i got more important things to work on
behind me and with me and alongside of
me is a team that’s like
yeah let’s go for it and get better
there we got a change there
is not just what bob is saying
there’s 50 other people behind me saying
yeah
i’m leaning into it and so i wish i
could give you
or your listeners even a glimpse into
how these calls go
and this esprit de corps of the calls
as we try and grow and uh get smarter
and improve as a team when they make a
movie about your life
who plays bob i don’t i don’t know how
to answer that
i don’t want a movie ever made about me
i would love a movie
to be made about my nine grandchildren
so go talk to them and figure that out
but
heck no not me and then last question
you now have the ability to talk to
anybody throughout history who to be
with
and why yeah that’s that’s a hard
question too
but you know the one thing that comes to
mind is
uh you know i had the i had to benefit
yesterday of spending the afternoon with
my
dear old dad who’s in his 90s
and trying to press on in life
with parkinson’s and some other physical
challenges and
we had a really sweet conversation you
know i lost my
mother younger in life and it
kind of gave me a hunger that at least
right now while you’re catching me
on the heels of that conversation boy oh
boy would i
love to have a couple water or
tea or lemonade with
that dear lady well bob i want to thank
you for coming
on scaling up h2o i know we’re always
thinking on how we can get
our operation more efficient but you got
us thinking about how
we can bring innovation into our
companies and that’s really where the
growth happens
thank you for uh meeting like this and
uh
certainly thank you to any listener
who’s been
uh patiently riding along uh with us
i i really appreciate that that’s a
that’s a great honor
and privilege
[Music]
nation i hope that you were thinking
differently through this entire
interview
i know when i was speaking with bob when
i was interviewing him
i made a list of new things that i
wanted to try i hope you’ve done the
same thing
bob thank you for sharing those ideas
with us
and challenging us to think a little bit
differently folks i want us to think a
little bit differently
and we’re going to think a little bit
differently each and
every week 52 tries
at james’s challenge folks here’s
another installment
[Music]
hello scaling up nation the next james’s
challenge as we grow as an industrial
water treatment professional
drop by drop is
check makeup water for ammonia ammonia
can come from many sources
including runoff from farmlands
undetected ammonia in your make it water
can cause a variety of problems
one such problem is with using chlorine
as an oxidizing biocide
chlorine reacts very quickly with
ammonia forming chloramines
which may not have the same biocidal
power you were counting upon
it can certainly leave you scratching
your head wondering why your
chlorine-based oxidizing buy-side
program
isn’t working knowing what you’re up
against can help you decide
the next steps of increasing chlorine
feed to reach break point chlorination
feeding a supplemental biocide or
changing the biocide program
altogether be sure to share your
experiences on linkedin by tagging it
with hashtag jc21
and hashtag scalinguph2o this is james
mcdonald and i look forward to seeing
what you share
folks i can’t wait to see your social
media post on
jc 21 or scaling up
h2o i love seeing that i think that
motivates everybody
to do these challenges and i’ve gotten
some great notes where people have
really been
following along with these challenges
and they really feel that it’s pushing
them to become
a better water treater now maybe you’ve
fallen behind
that’s okay you can go back and you can
do
all of these challenges you can catch up
it’s great if you can do it each and
every week but folks if you’ve fallen
behind
you can go back and catch up speaking of
catching up last week i received a lot
of questions about the lsi
the longer saturation index that james
challenged us on
i did a show on that it was episode
24. it was one of my first questions
from the nation
and i received some questions back then
on what was lsi
what was rsi the risener saturation
index and what was
psi the practical or precaurious
saturation index so i talk about all of
those things
back on episode 24 so if you’re trying
to research
those stability indices you can go back
to episode 24.
and for those people that wrote in thank
you so much for letting me know
how you are doing on james’s challenge
folks if you want to let me know
something it’s super easy to do
you can go to scaling scalinguph2o.com
and then you can click over on show
ideas
folks thanks so much for listening and
i’ll have a brand new episode for you
next week of scaling up h2o
nation are you thinking about joining
the rising tide
mastermind group well here’s what
bernadette combs had to say about that
very subject
so if i could uh tell somebody who is
considering
joining the masterminds group i would
say you should do it and i have asked
people what is the masterminds group and
i always tell them
you know it’s a great group they they’re
people that i knew
beforehand but they didn’t have a great
relationship with and they’re from all
over the country
but they’re other water treatment
professionals and they’re going through
similar things that you are and so
they’re able to be a mentor to you and
it’s somebody who
can give you good advice for both
personally and professionally and the
guidance and grounding i get during that
one hour a week
helps guide me keep me focused and
motivated
throughout the whole week so i would say
it’s a good one hour of the day
and for those people that say they don’t
have enough time
in the day or enough time in the week i
would say
you make time for what’s important to
you and this should be important too
because it
keeps you motivated for the rest of the
week so it keeps you staying focused
throughout the week if you’re thinking
about joining the rising tide
mastermind go to scaling
scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind to find out more about the
group
and schedule a call with me so we can
talk exactly about what you are going to
get from the group
and what the group expects to get from
you
folks this is a commitment of your time
this is a commitment of your resources
but i promise if you take advantage of
this
opportunity it is going to promote you
in ways that you haven’t even considered
go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash
[Music]
mastermind
you