Ops leaders everywhere are stretched thin: constant fires, shifting priorities, and teams worried AI will erase their roles. Budgets are shrinking, yet expectations keep rising, often with fewer resources and no extra hands.
That’s why process guru Pat Eglin and I team up. Pat’s spent 25 years untangling real-world ops challenges. I coach leaders, teams, and groups to stay resilient, cut through the overwhelm, and turn the daily grind into real wins. Together, we are the kind of team you want in your corner: We see the whole picture and help leaders balance systems and people.
In this chat, moderated by Chuck Coveleski, we dig into ground-level realities, like gamifying AI adoption, and the pitfalls of bot-written processes.
You’ll get down-to-earth strategies to help your team adapt, beat overwhelm, and rack up some wins. For the full episode, and more support, head over to yourfuturerealized.com/119.
How AI and Resource Constraints Are Changing the Game
Chuck Covaleski
What are some of the most common challenges that ops leaders have been sharing with you lately?
Pat Eglin
Two of the biggest things that I’m hearing right now, of course, is around the adoption of AI. Everybody’s doing it. It’s top of everybody’s list this year. But the other thing really, too, is a reduction in resources. And sometimes that reduction in resources is because of AI. Companies are implementing AI, they’re reducing their workforce as a result. In other cases, I have a lot of clients who deal with federal contracting. So we’re seeing a reduction in programs, we’re seeing a reduction in funding. You know, we had a government shutdown for two weeks, which impacted everybody. So that they’re really the main two topics.
But in talking not just to leaders and talking to actual resources, the doers of the company, people are scared. They’re scared that AI is going to take over their job. They’re scared that do more with less really means do more with nothing.
Coping with Constant Change: The Human Side of Operations
So I’ve heard that the pressure to deliver more with fewer resources, they’re overloaded. They’re under a lot of stress. They’re under a lot of pressure and again, it’s hard to keep up with the pace in some cases and a lot of times the processes haven’t kept up with that pace with the growth or the technology changes.
Laura Malinowski
All of that that Pat has just said means that people are coming constantly, needing to reprioritize and shuffle things around and thin out their resources and repurpose resources in places that maybe weren’t meant to. And sort of a sense that there’s a non stop fire to tend to.
And I hear a lot of, “oh my gosh, I can’t even catch my breath. I don’t even have room to think about what I would do if I would catch my breath, let alone think strategically about all of this or think about how to actually leverage this in a smart way and in a profitable way and in a way that’s going to help my team.” So there’s a lot of sort of concern about burnout. There’s a lot of erosion of confidence, like, “if I can’t even keep this moving forward for myself, how can I keep everybody else moving?” And, there’s a sense of like, how do you stay afloat when everything is just moving and how do you keep everyone moving? It’s a lot of pressure and a lot of stress.
Chuck
So, it sounds like things aren’t getting easier. What do you think CEOs and their teams are doing to help navigate these new pressures from AI or other changes? What are you hearing?
Pat
Innovative Approaches to AI Adoption in Operations
First off, there’s a lot of companies that still have gaps in skill sets. They don’t have the resources that they need. They haven’t properly adopted AI because they don’t really know how or they don’t know how to use it, how to use it more effectively. You know, Laura used words like profitability and moving forward and, and there’s a lot of companies that just don’t have the know how. And I have two examples for you.
So I’ve seen, I’ve seen clients from, you know, one extreme to the other one actually – and I thought this was a brilliant idea – She actually turned it into a game. She got the entire company together and offered cash prizes for anyone who could come up with an AI idea. But it had to be the most innovative. There had to be a full use case along with it. There was a lot of different criteria, but she turned it into a game for everybody in the organization. Whether you were in technology, whether you were the admin. Everybody got to play. Everybody got to come up with an idea of how they could use AI within the company to improve the work that’s being output, to come up with a new solution for something, a new product, or just to increase the way their workflow runs.
But then on the flip side of that, I have a customer who I asked recently, “how are you adopting AI? How’s it going?” And she was all excited and she said, “oh, we use AI all the time.” And I said, “well, that’s great, you know, because I’m looking in my business, how can I use it?” I use it quite a bit. But I’m always talking to other people to see, did I miss something? Is there another idea that I have that could come up with? So, she said, “we use Chat GPT for everything. I use it for all my emails and I use it to write my processes.” And I said, “Well, that’s great, but do you use it for anything else?” And she’s like, “Well, no, that’s all, that’s all I know how to use.”
Okay, well I was reading one of the processes that she had written and I said, “I don’t understand this one section. Could you explain it to me?” And her answer was,
“Well, I don’t know, Chat GPT wrote it.”
You wrote the process, your name’s on it, and you rolled this out to your organization. What are you going to do now when they come back and they say, I don’t understand it, can you explain it to me? And the answer I got was a shoulder shrug.
It really is running the gamut. And I think CEOs are trying to catch up and leadership in general are trying to catch up. They’re concerned that they don’t have necessarily the technology, the skill set, and that their competitors are going to get ahead of them. And one thing I’ve seen and I actually talked to a client about this is it’s not about chasing the shiny object or the greatest tool and saying, “oh, well, we’re going to be AI because everybody else is.” It’s a trend.
You really need to sit down and look at your business independently and say, what are the advantages here? How can I use it? How can I provide value to my customers, to my resources, to my team, to my employees? All of those things. So yeah, I’ve seen a wide range of adoption here. Some of it funny, some of it a little scary.
Building Accountability and Culture in a Tech-Driven World
Chuck
Laura, what are you hearing from some of your clients as well that they’re adopting to adapt to these changes?
Laura
I actually love what Pat has brought up. It has brought up a question that I’m really looking forward to getting into in general, which is around accountability with AI is it’s very easy to be like, well that’s just what that said. But then there’s, there needs to be a human accountable ultimately, right? And there will be a human accountable ultimately, even if it’s not the person who entered that question into ChatGPT, even if it might just be the tech people who installed it that get blamed if something goes wrong.
But I’m hearing some of those things. I hadn’t heard that story before. I’m hearing a lot of curiosity, I’m hearing a lot of excitement about innovation in general and what this means. But I kind of like when the, when the door is closed and we’re just in a zoom together, I hear a lot of worry about the humans and what it means for them. And does that mean they’re going to be out of a job? Or does that mean they need to be looking elsewhere or do they suddenly need to become experts? I’ve had clients say they’ve been told they need to within the next two months become ‘expert at AI,’ which is hysterical because it’s changing constantly. So that seems a little odd to have to deal with.
So there’s a lot of that and there’s a fair amount of fear and sort of a sense that this is bigger than us and we just can’t handle it or we don’t know how to handle it yet. So I hear on the good side of that, where I hear is I hear maybe similar to Pat, I hear some good movement forward when people are approaching it. Like let’s try some experiments. Not like, let’s not hand chatgpt all of our problems, but let’s try this little specific experiment in this area to try to get to one result. Like really having it in sort of bite-sized chunks that are manageable and have too big a risk attached to it to get comfortable with what’s going on. I think that that helps people be able to take it and ride along with it a little easier.
I think also it’s been very helpful to hear from clients that there’s a conversation about what this tool and what these challenges are bringing to the culture of an organization, particularly when people are working remotely, at least part of the time, if not all the time. It’s very easy for people to sort of feel siloed off on their own. And now it’s just them and really just them and their computer. And that does something to a company’s culture. It does something to a sense of mission and loyalty and even a sense of having a healthy ecosystem.
So, I’m hearing a lot about how to sort of raise that conversation so that it’s not just happening invisibly, but, how do we talk about it as a culture? How to give yourself a little bit more of a gracious runway together, deal with things that we don’t really know how it’s going to work out yet or how it’s going to impact us.
Chuck
What are you doing to kind of help them go through it with your flexible and bite sized approach. What do you think is going to make a difference for some of those busy executives?
Small Shifts, Big Impact: The Power of Bite-Sized Change
Laura
One thing I know is that operations leaders and leaders in general don’t need another big initiative. They don’t need another thing to manage. They don’t need another big chunk of time on their calendar. They need stuff that fits into their real life and their real week and what they really have going on. So I like to approach it like sort of tweaking the axis of a wheel, where you’re making small adjustments in almost like surgical places that are doable and something you can actually integrate into your life. And it’s small, but it might actually make really huge changes on the outer wheel, and where things are spinning out there in the world.
So when Pat and I talk about how we serve with clients, it’s like, well, we’re not here to just pile on a new system or give you a new checklist of something to do, or here’s six new modules you have to learn so that… We’re here to find out, to listen, really, and to find out what’s going on and what’s already working. And maybe it’s something that’s already working that just needs to be turned up 2 degrees. Right. Sometimes just one conversation can shift decisions and create shifts that free up minutes or hours or just give a more of a sense of ease.
So we’re really, we’re trying to think that way as opposed to – I think one of the old ways would be to be like, we’re going to overhaul the system. Yeah, there was a lot of overhauling already happening.
Pat
The Importance of Behavior Change in Successful Transformations
You know, I want to go back to something that Laura said in the last question or the last answer, and that was about, you know, resources being told they have two months to become experts in AI. Well, AI is a huge topic. It reminds me of back, and this is going to age me a little bit, but 20 years ago when Agile came out and that was the big thing, you have to adopt Agile. Well, there’s different methodologies within Agile. There’s different ways to do it. But you talk to companies even today, 20 years later, and they say, oh, well, we’re agile. Well, what does that mean? Because that’s just a general term.
To me, AI is also just a general term. There’s a lot of different ways that you can implement it. There’s a lot of different ways that you can use it, some more innovative than others. It’s not necessarily all about technology. I don’t think it should be treated as a technical project.
I think it should be more of a behavioral shift. So your culture, to everything that Laura just talked about, the culture and the working from home, all of that lends itself to the fact that you’re asking employees to change their behavior. If you’ve ever studied organizational change or change management, organizational behavior, you know that almost as important as having this massive initiative and breaking this down into smaller bites so that the executives don’t have too much on their plate. it’s the adoption by resources. People don’t change their behavior because you tell them to. And anybody who’s been married or had a significant other knows that that is very true.
You can’t just change somebody’s behavior because you tell them to. It’s something that they have to be able to adopt, they have to be able to digest it and digesting the change in smaller pieces helps your employees as well move forward.
I’m not trying to paint this with a broad brush because you have companies with various size organizations, you have some with, you know, millions of employees, you have some with a few hundred. So the situation is different based on the size of your organization. But the general rule of thumb, and I’ve been working with clients doing transformation for over 20 years and I can tell you there’s science behind the fact that as human beings we can only adopt so much change at one time and overwhelmed teams can absorb big change.
Actionable Tips: Getting Unstuck and Moving Forward
It requires cognitive and emotional capability which just goes out the window when you’re looking down. 350-some days of a New Year’s resolution. Why do they fail? Because the path from where they start to where they end is way too large and it’s just overwhelming. It’s too much. So again, that’s another reason to break it down into smaller chunks. And I could do a whole hour on change management transformation. But that’s another reason to take it down into smaller chunks. It’s, you know that old saying, how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time. It’s the same concept.
Laura
There’s really something to that. This is why we, this is why we work well together. That there’s something to taking it in small chunks and there’s something to naming small goals then. Right?
Not like we’re going to be, we’re going to have AI fix everything as opposed to naming specific things or specific issues or specific challenges or specific areas, specific processes that that’s going to enhance somehow and then, and then it’s not just enhancing it, but what are the specific outcomes? What going back to just your basic s.m.a.r.t. goals, what are the specific measurable, actionable, relevant and time bound small goals so that we’re not (A) biting off more than we can chew and (B) that what I think the goal should be is not necessarily what Pat thinks the goal should be or Chuck thinks the goal should be.
So, the more specific you can be. And that takes time. That takes strategic thought and that takes collaboration to drill down to what is the specific thing that we want to achieve with this. And it’s not just keep up with AI or use AI. That’s so broad. That means, that means too many things.
Chuck
It’s so interesting to hear you to talk about this, right? Because it’s obviously a lot to kind of go through. But listening to both of you be a big advocate for bite sized chunks, could you share with us maybe some ideas or one quick way that our ops leaders listening today could use to maybe get over a hurdle or unstick themselves?
Pat
So I was going to talk about the whole New Year’s resolution thing again, but I’m going to pass. I’m going to skip past that because I think we all know I stopped doing resolutions years ago because we all know how this work out.
But the big thing I would say, a lot of times when things get to be too much and things get tough, people have a tendency to kind of zoom out. So they take a step back and they say, let me take a look at what’s happening. Let me look at the big picture and kind of come up with a plan. Now, Laura may have a different opinion, our viewers may have a different opinion, but to me, really what should happen is you should zoom in. So you should get closer to the problem. You should narrow it down. And again, we’re back to taking those small chunks.
But it’s, it’s really just looking at one friction point. What is slowing me down today? Not what do I need to change in the next six months. Why? What do I need to change, you know, in the next 30 days. What is slowing me down today? What is something that I can do to actually change that? What can I do to move that needle forward so that I see some improvement?
It’s taking those small things, getting those small wins, and that also helps the team. So not just management, and depending on where you are in management, if you look up the chain, higher ups, they want to see results and they want to see them not in six months, not in a year. They want to see them, you know, 30 days, 60 days. Some of them want to see them faster than that. So, you’re able to, by taking smaller chunks and finding that one friction point that’s causing an issue and fixing it from start to finish. Don’t do it halfway. Do it completely from the beginning to the end, come up with a new way of doing it, an improved way of doing it, whatever your option is but finish it start to the end.
Going up the chain, they get to see that result, but going down the chain too, people at a lower level get to See that instant result now it feels doable. It feels like it’s something that can happen. Oh, we saw this change. Well, now what can we fix? Now what? What can we look at next? There was a whole big thing a couple years ago about changing the transformation and changing process and changing the organizational behavior. If you game gamified, helped organizations adopt it again, that’s kind of a different topic. But the idea being take those small wins, focus on one thing, start to end. And with that, I’ll pass it over to Laura.
Laura
Celebrating Small Wins and Creating Operational Clarity
I think 100% to everything you just said. And absolutely that people see that people need that sense that we’ve actually achieved something, that we’ve made a mark here, that we’ve hit a milestone here. And we’re forgetting that because we have so much coming at us that needs to be done. It is going back to your question, Chuck, about what am I hearing from people? When I say to people, how do you celebrate when you hit wins? They look at me like, how do we what? Like that’s gone. There’s just not time for it. So, it is important to the conversation and to the momentum.
What I would add to the concept of carving out space for small wins, it’s also carving out space for small wins that perhaps can impact other things. So asking yourself if there’s only one thing that we could improve or we could work on in the next week or month, that would make everything else easier… Again, this is going back to take some time to be calm or be strategic and be thoughtful about it…. What is the one thing?
Sometimes, particularly when you’re working with your team, it’s about the work, it’s about a process. It’s about the way people connect, or maybe they’re connecting too much. So sometimes it’s about literally flushing these three standing meetings where we’re just giving each other updates for no reason. Sometimes it’s something like that, something for individual leaders. It might not even have something to do with work specifically. It might be, oh, I need to get out for a run or I need to make sure I have extra support lined up for my kids at home. Something that again, it’s small, but it’s something at that center of the wheel that helps everything else go better.
So I think that that’s a point about when you ask, how do you get unstuck?. I think sometimes it’s very small things that make a difference when you really pause and consider that. So that’s one.
And another thing that I would say as far as getting unstuck – One of my favorite tools to reach to with clients is to say, is to make a list of all the things you’re saying yes to and know that every time you’re saying yes to something, you’re saying no to at least one other thing, maybe five other things or 10 other things, and those become invisible. All the things we’ve said no to because we’re saying yes to everything. But pausing to notice, what am I actually saying no to?
Seeing those trade offs and actually addressing them and acknowledging them, can be really helpful to uncover those places where we get stuck. And we’re like, why are we stuck? Well, because we’re not letting all these things get done because we’re so focused here. It helps to give a more complete picture of what’s going on.
Pat
That’s operational clarity. It also helps those improvements stick and the teams can move faster because there’s less friction then. So there has to be that level of clarity as well as all the other things. You have to take the human change and all of those things that we talked about already into account. Everything’s got to be there. You have to have that full picture. But you need to figure out the best way to do it so that you’re not overwhelming people.
Chuck
Meet Your Experts: Pat and Laura’s Unique Journey to Teamwork
It sounds like both of you have different but very similar backgrounds. Can you share a little bit with the audience about what brought you to this point and how you get all these creative ideas with your customers and how did you both team up for this?
Laura
So, I’m an ICF certified executive coach and team coach. And how did I get here? I worked in operations in other people’s businesses for a really long time. And at some point I thought that what I loved was the business and the operations, and I did, and I was good at and it was fruitful. And at some point, though, I realized what I really loved was the mission and working with people and looking at those impossible things and saying, how do we get there? And how do we work together to get there and how do we be better humans and leaders to be able to achieve that? And so then that began my coaching chapter of life seven years ago.
How Pat and I met up – we met up through LinkedIn. I actually don’t remember the first time we chatted, but we both knew that we were sort of operations geeks and loved working with people that. The sorts of things that we were loving talking about. Just like we’re enjoying this conversation. And so it just sort of organically happened like, well, let’s, let’s do something together. How do we combine the fact that we each approach this often the same problems, but with different resources and different perspectives about it? What if we teamed up? How would that work? And so, it’s been a fascinating experiment.
Pat
I’ve been in multiple positions. I started several years ago, we’ll say over 20 years ago, working for a software company where I grew into a process side of it. How do things work? How do you document things? How do you run as an organization? How do your business functions operate? And as I grew through my career, I was then a COO and then I was a CEO, you know, CEO of my own. My own company at this point. So I’ve seen both sides of it. I’ve been that worker bee. I’ve done the work, I’ve done the task. And I know what it’s like to not have that process or not have that definition and having that lack of clarity coming from management as to what you’re supposed to be doing, and just feeling like you’re not going to win whatever you do.
And then I also have the operations side and I understand, what do you really need to have in place to be able to deliver your projects, to be able to deliver to your customers the value and the requirements, whatever they’re asking you to do? How can you do it and how can you do it well? So that’s really how Laura and I came up with this idea of, of combining forces and working with leaders and teams in this day and age where they’re struggling with both the emotional side as well as the process or the more tactical side.
Chuck
Apparently, there’s a lot going on out there! How would people interested in doing more, how would they get in touch with you and Pat?
Connect with Pat & Laura
Connect with Pat & Laura
- On LinkedIn: Laura Malinowski , Pat Eglin
- Via email: connect@nullopsthatflow.com
Thanks for listening! We would love to hear what’s going on with you.
Big thanks to Chuck Coveleski, for being an exceptional host—steering this discussion, asking the tough questions, and ensuring our listeners walk away with actionable takeaways! Connect with Chuck here.