Interview Transcript

John Williams

You know, often we hear from people that listen to the Wintrust Business Lunch, who are just small business owners, and they appreciate any perspective we can give them, either on interest rates and the economy or personal finance. Sometimes, we speak directly to small business owners about their business.

Laura Dribin joins us now. She is the founder of something called Peritius Consulting. And she knows a thing or two about the scary waters of managing your own private small business.

Hey, Laura, you’re on WGN. Thanks for giving us some of your thoughts.

Laura Dribin

Thanks, John. I appreciate the time today. Nice to talk to you.

John

What does Peritius mean? What’s that word?

Laura

It is a Latin word meaning “more experienced.” And that was a name change that came from a company in Chicago, sort of an auction marketing firm.

John

Oh, no kidding?

Laura

So, they helped us with the rename.

John

I understand there are businesses that do that, help people with URLs, or names of products, or the brands themselves. So, you kind of reached out to somebody with that, huh?

Laura

I did. It was quite some time ago when we renamed our company, so . . . Yes, we’ve been around for 33 years, but that name has been probably around for . . . Oh gosh, I think we’re about 15 to 20 years ago we renamed it.

John

You work with small businesses, do you?

Laura

No, we don’t actually. So, Peritius Consulting, we’re a management consulting firm focusing exclusively on program and project management services, we call it outcome management. We tend to work with Fortune 1000 companies and private equity firms.

And we help to manage their large-scale, complex initiatives. Typically, the ones that involve a lot of disparate types of resources, such as tier-one consulting firms, or system integrators, or other third parties, plus their own internal staff. And we serve as that check and balance, helping to bring them all together as an integrated team.

John

So, it sounds like if you’ve got a lot of moving parts, it would be helpful to have somebody just oversee everything, make sure everything is getting done properly?

Laura

Exactly. Think of it like an orchestra conductor. We don’t play every instrument, but we know how to bring everyone together and make music.

John

But you would think that the company that was engaging all of these other businesses would have their own project manager managing that. So, what do you bring to it that isn’t already being done?

Laura

Sure. So, some of the things that we bring is an objectivity. First of all, it is not always easy to manage other third parties, the tier-one consulting firms. It can be difficult to manage them. So, our team is experienced in that.

Sometimes, our clients don’t have that staff, and other times it just may not be viewed as objective. When one department brings a leader to the table, there may be some concerns from the other departments that there’s a bias.

We do bring that objectivity to the table and the experience. Our people tend to be very seasoned senior-level consultants that know how to go through the chaos of these efforts.

John

I would imagine a lot of “A-type” personalities there. You must have learned to do some delicate dancing, I would say.

Laura

Yes, we do. That’s actually funny that you say that because I actually hire not just for project management skills, because I feel like a lot of people have those, I tend to hire for the soft skills, “how do you manage a dissenting sponsor or one that doesn’t want to really be involved and you still need their support?” So, we tend to look for people who know how to maneuver, as you said, those complex situations.

John

I don’t know how you find those people or what those exact traits are, especially since that might seem to be in competition with what maybe you would typically look for, right? Organized people with strong personalities, who can get the job done. But these soft skills, I don’t know if they teach that in business school, it would seem to be invaluable.

Laura

They do not [teach soft skills in business school], is my experience. I think that is a learned thing, which is probably why some of our staff are probably a little bit more seasoned in that space. Because I’ll be honest, right out of school, I don’t know if I could have done what we’re doing now. So, I think that’s somewhat learned in business, how do you maneuver.

And even though we’re an outsider there’s still politics in every situation. Or even just as I said, when you are doing a large transformative type of initiative like we do work on, you’re going to have some people who don’t really want to do it, or who haven’t bought into [it], is probably the better way of saying it, haven’t really bought into the desired outcome. So how do you get them on board? That’s a skill in its own right.

John

I’m thinking of my friend Kelly Leonard, who does a podcast here, works at Second City, The Comedy House in Chicago, but on their business initiatives. And one of the things he always talks about is getting to “yes” and . . . So, getting people to affirm what they bring to the table, but gently maybe steer[ing] them in a direction that’s more for the common good. You must appreciate that.

Laura

I actually took an improv class at the IO theater before COVID, for that very reason, I figured it could help. And I know at least one of my consultants joined afterwards, because it’s an invaluable skill.

John

For all of us. Just give me one example. I don’t have a lot of time here and I won’t ask you to go into detail, but can you describe for me a project that you all have worked on?

Laura

Sure. Digital transformation is popular right now, it’s a term, and we’ve worked on a number of those. But the one that I’ll share with you involves a large acquisition integration, two companies trying to find their way to merge together, both [tech] systems, as well as processes and people.

We help[ed] to oversee that whole process. What systems should be integrated, which systems should be chosen, what processes, how do we integrate the two teams together. And how do you get buy-in. That’s one of the things that we focus in on as well. So that’s an example that a lot of organizations may be able to understand.

And we are agnostic, both industry as well as functional. So, we’ll work with IT, we’ll work with HR and marketing, or we’ll work on enterprise initiatives. And so, in an acquisition integration, it affects everybody. Those are the programs that we really like to work on, where there’s a lot of moving parts

John

Well, I’m glad somebody does. I like to work on it, because I can just imagine Company A has the way they do their email, and the way they do their reports, and their software, and Company B might be completely different, and now they’re going to be one. So, who’s going to manage that integration or at least make it a soft landing for everybody? And it sounds like Laura Dribin’s your person to help handle that.