IAM1332 – COO Turned CEO Helps Organizations Achieve Operational Excellence

Bonnie Ortiz formed O2 Consulting Group, a premier professional services firm, in 2017 after spending almost a decade as the Chief Operating Officer for The Partnership Federal Credit Union. A recognized expert in strategy formation, process improvement, and project management, Bonnie now provides her clients with a comprehensive operational toolkit, aligning people, processes, and systems to corporate goals.

She has worked with commercial for-profit and non-profit entities across numerous industries and has managed substantial budgets and staff as a leader within organizations of various sizes, from start-ups to multi-billion-dollar firms. Bonnie’s expertise is rooted in the achievement of operational excellence, focusing the organization’s executive team on advancing their priorities and achieving their desired results. Bonnie currently serves as the Commodore of the Herring Bay Yacht Club and as the Voce Chair of the Dream Queen Association Board of Directors, giving her time and expertise to cultivating the next generation of leaders.

• CEO Story: Bonnie has worked with incredible CEOs who have a vision, creativity, and passion for the businesses that they are in. And she was in the best situation ever when she was able to partner with them to execute that vision.
• Business Service: Strategy formation, process improvement, and project management. Providing operational toolkit, process, and systems to corporate goals.
• Secret Sauce: The ability to execute the recommendations she made. Discovering, data gathering, and making recommendations that are doable in a realistic time period.
• CEO Hack: Mission Control (how to set appointments in your calendar) and Crucial conversations
• CEO Nugget: Avoid Burnout by creating a balance (e.g. going to the beach, volunteering, etc.)
• CEO ReDefined: Both develop the vision and execute it.

Website: o2consultinggroup.co
Facebook: O2-Consulting-Group
LinkedIn: bonnie-ortiz

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share precisely the information you're searching for. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:28 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Bonnie Ortiz of O2 Consulting. Bonnie, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:37 – Bonnie Ortiz

Thank you, Gresham.

00:38 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about all the great things that Bonnie's been able to do and accomplish so that you can learn a little bit more about her. Bonnie Ortiz formed O2 Consulting Group, a premier professional service firm in 2017 after spending almost a decade as the chief operating officer for the Partnership Federal Credit Union. A recognized expert in strategy formation, process improvement, and project management, Bonnie now provides her clients with a comprehensive operational toolkit aligning people, processes, and systems to corporate goals.

She has worked with commercial for-profit and not-for-profit entities across numerous industries and has managed substantial budgets and staff as a leader with organizations of various sizes from startups to multi-billion dollar firms. Bonnie's expertise is rooted in the achievement of operational excellence and focusing the organization's executive team on advancing their priorities and achieving their desired results. Bonnie currently serves as a Commodore of the Herring Bay Yacht Club and as the vice chair of the Dream Queen Association Board of Directors, giving her time and expertise to cultivate the next generation of leaders. Bonnie, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:54 – Bonnie Ortiz

I sure am.

01:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, the first question I had was just if there was anything additional you wanted to kind of let us know about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

02:02 – Bonnie Ortiz

You know, I think that the only thing that I would add Gresham is that over the years, I have worked with some incredible CEOs, and all of those CEOs have had a vision, creativity, and a passion for the businesses that they were in, and the goals that they wanted to achieve. I find myself in the best situation ever when I can partner with those CEOs to help them execute that vision and realize the passions that they have.

02:29 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, and that's really great because you get the opportunity to kind of leverage your strengths, so to speak. So could you, I guess, talk a little bit more about like how you get to partner with those CEOs and how you kind of help out the clients that you work with?

02:39 – Bonnie Ortiz

Sure. Many years ago, I realized that my organizational skills and my pension for details made me the perfect candidate to really develop an operational plan and execute that plan in the timeframes that my boss's supervisors had desired. As I progressed in my career, I found myself being partnered with folks who were leading efforts around growth, process improvements, and projects.

And so I have from time to time been placed in situations where I've been called upon to give my expertise to the leader of the group and always it has been because of the ability to build and execute those operational plans. In the early 80s I became a certified project manager both domestically and internationally and so many many many times as a project manager I found myself teamed with very senior executives and companies as large as AT&T and as small as some of the smaller credit unions in the industry today.

03:48 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome. And yeah, that's obviously something that is not sometimes realized from a business standpoint, just how important operations are and how that makes everything kind of flow and go smoothly and helps the business to kind of run efficiently. So I wanted to ask you, I guess, if could you explain a little bit more about what you feel makes your business and organization unique.

04:06 – Bonnie Ortiz

O2 Consulting Group was formed out of my own passion to support others as I was supported when I was coming up in my career. And as a result, I absolutely love to come into an organization and roll out my sleeves. So I'm not a consultant who comes in, meets with the CEO, conducts a gap analysis, and presents a report that costs a tremendous amount of money and really doesn't tell you how to do it. Rather, my differentiator is in my ability to be able to execute the recommendations I make.

So, discovering and data gathering and making recommendations that are doable, that are doable in a realistic time period, and that are accompanied by training, coaching, and mentoring for the staff who will end up doing the job when I leave. I have always believed that as a consultant, it's not my responsibility to stay and become a part of the organization, it's rather my responsibility to teach a man to fish and let them go.

05:10 – Gresham Harkless

That's powerful and it's huge because a lot of times you know sometimes you have consultants that say okay this is what I think is wrong. This is my diagnosis. So here you try to fix it, but you give them the information and the tools really to kind of make sure those solutions are taken care of. And they're also able to kind of continue on and be more efficient and effective when you leave as well?

05:33 – Bonnie Ortiz

That's correct. I've actually developed an operational toolkit that you referenced in my bio, and every piece of that toolkit from the project plan to the communication plan to the risk plan to the quality plan to the test plan is left behind as a template for the folks who are in those positions to follow to be able to use them over and over again with a small amount of tailoring.

05:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I love the concept and the idea of that because again, like you said, you know, teaching a man or a woman to be able to kind of fish for themselves is insanely important. And a lot of times why do people go into business anyways or start their organization anyway? So I wanted to kind of switch gears a little bit. And one of the things that you know, I'm excited about, you know, getting the opportunity to ask you about is a CEO hack. And that might be a book, it might be an app, but the idea is just something that you use on a regular everyday basis that makes you more efficient and effective as a CEO.

06:28 – Bonnie Ortiz

Okay, there are actually 2 tools that I use every single day, and I learned them and adopted them very early in my career when I was working for another consulting firm in the healthcare space, in the public healthcare space. One is called mission control. Mission control is actually the technique of placing every one of your appointments, whether they're personal, professional, or otherwise, into your calendar. And that includes not only just meeting with people and calling people, but also the work you have to do.

So the deliverables that are required after those meetings are over. While my calendar looks like a chaotic mess every single day, I know each and every day exactly what I have to accomplish and how I need to move those throughout the week to be able to be completely successful. And then at the end of the week, every single Friday, I look at that list and I determine whether or not I need to move things to the following week, to work just a little bit more over the weekend to complete some really critical things or if I'm on track and it gives me an opportunity to be able to balance my professional and my personal life.

The other tool that I have used for a long long time is something that I learned through a Vital Smarts course called Crucial Conversations. Crucial Conversations really allows you to be as straightforward and honest as you possibly can, keeping and maintaining a safe space for you and for the person or persons that are talking to you. Always allowed me to sort of cut through all of the crap, as you might say. We often do these political dances, and I just don't think that we have any time for that in today's fast-paced world.

The particular program has taught me how to not only be straightforward, but not blunt, to do it with heart, and to really provide an opportunity for individuals who are working alongside you to know that you have integrity and to be consistent in the way that you talk with them all the time. And so it engenders loyalty and engenders teamwork And it really builds on relationships and it's allowed me to maintain some really significant relationships for many years.

08:40 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, those are definitely 2 great tools. And especially like with the mission control, I think sometimes and often most entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs have so many different things going on in that you know you have a hundred things to do, but you have no idea what they are, but to be able to kind of map it out and play it out and plan it out, I should say, kind of helps kind of take that burden off because you know, you're kind of a little bit more in control. And one of the next things I wanted to ask you was for a CEO nugget. This might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice that you might have for others like entrepreneurs and business owners. So do you have a CEO nugget you can provide for us?

09:13 – Bonnie Ortiz

You know, I probably have so many of them that it's ridiculous. But when I was thinking about this, the first thing that came to my mind is that burnout is so easy to get yourself to, especially when you are an entrepreneur and you want to do it all and you have great ideas and a strong vision and you can execute fast and furiously. I think the tendency sometimes is to take on way, way too much in a short period of time and you either end up only living in a professional world and not getting an opportunity to go off and smell the roses.

So as you can see by my bio, I have deliberately begun engaging in a lot of outside activities, such as the odd club. I still can provide my leadership thereby being the president and chairman of the board. With the Dream Queen Association, where I get an opportunity to work alongside Adol and team gals who are looking for that mentoring and leadership that they often need to gain their confidence and secure a path for themselves.

And so I would say to every CEO, especially those who start out late in life and want to have their own business, you have to create a balance. And that balance can come in a lot of forms. It doesn't necessarily have to be sitting on a beach reading a book. It can be using your strengths, and opportunities in ways that remind you of what you're most passionate about, but it gives you a different avenue without the stress of your everyday job and building your own organization.

10:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And sometimes you forget in the day-to-day minutiae why you're doing what it is that you're doing. And like you said, your organization that you're able to kind of be a member of and play a pivotal role in, it kind of helps you remind you of exactly like why you're doing what you're doing and what your strengths and how you can kind of contribute to the overall society.

One of my favorite questions I should ask is get an opportunity to figure out what being a CEO might mean to you because we have different types of quote-unquote CEOs on this podcast and we're going to have different types of guests from different roles and kind of business walks of life. I wanted to ask you specifically what does being a CEO mean to you.

11:26 – Bonnie Ortiz

Being a CEO to me means the freedom to develop both the vision and execute it. It gives me the opportunity to become visible among an organization of fabulous individuals, whether it be in the healthcare industry, the telecommunications industry, in the financial industry, network alongside them, gather ideas and collaborate at a level that I can then bring back to my own organization. And you know,

Because I have always been more inclined towards the chief operating officer role and the execution of the CEO's vision, this is the first time that I have had an opportunity to take my own vision and then execute it. And I think it's going to be very interesting over the next few years to watch that grow and to see how it can expand. So instead of fulfilling someone else's vision, I'm getting an opportunity to fulfill mine.

12:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Yeah. I love that perspective. And then you also obviously have the experience and tools to understand like from our operational standpoint, exactly how to execute that. So being the CEO and having the kind of technician skillset as well too is a good mix to have and how to execute and carry out those visions that you have. So Bonnie, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do was give you the mic, so to speak, one more time to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know And then also to like how best people can get a hold of you.

13:03 – Bonnie Ortiz

Sure. Thank you I think finally what I would say is that throughout my entire career, I have always placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on people the relationships that you build, and the way you give back. Paying it forward is an incredibly powerful concept. And I cherish all the notes and emails I receive from younger people starting their careers or those I have mentored.

Even as they retire and seek opportunities in consulting, they still come back to me for advice. So I would just say that we should never lose sight of the fact that even though we're in a world of automation, we're in a world of social media, and the person and the contact with the person is really still the most important thing.

13:56 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, vital, and very strong words. And for those people who might be listening to this, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you Bonnie?

14:03 – Bonnie Ortiz

Well, they can call me on my office line which is 571-334-9185. They can visit my website at www.02consultinggroup.co or they can email me at bonniesorties.gmail.com or at o2consultinggroup.co.

14:26 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again Bonnie for all the awesome things that you're doing, all the things you're doing to kind of impact, obviously from an insulting standpoint, but also from a giving back and paying it for a standpoint. So I appreciate you for everything you do, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

14:42 – Bonnie Ortiz

Thank you so much, Gretchen, and thank you for having me.

14:45 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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