Jack skills. Tell me about your vision.
My vision really is that we need to manage differently and better and less.
And so what we've been doing for the last, what I've been doing, my mission now these days for the last 15 years has been to help managers understand that they can do less managing and be better managers and make people happier, make organizations better.
I love that. I'm a big fan of the one minute manager. In fact, I don't hear it talked about very often. But is that something that you're a fan of or that's something you're like, no, I don't like it either.
Oh, that was a cornerstone book in the business of business books and the like. So, no, a huge fan of it. I'm a huge fan of the idea that simple interactions matter. I think there's a big step forward from where we were back then to where it took us to.
I think that the there's a lot of science now behind how we should be managing the like. And my book, though, is instead being like 80 pages, it's about 380 pages.
Oh, nice.
It's a little bit more busy in terms of how to think about the business. But one minute manager was great. And until then, management was largely thought of as a business of how to punish people, essentially, if they weren't doing enough work.
And so there's a great first step towards there being more of a practice model. That is I'm trying to help people get work done. Yeah, absolutely. As you can see, we've adopted it. What was that? That's a great graphic, by the way. Very nice.
Thank you. I mean, these it's so important for my team, right, to know how to go about management. We're at a pretty small stage where the management doesn't have as much of an effect on our operations. Rather, there's not a whole lot of managers to teach to follow that concept.
We're still pretty small as a startup. But it's still critical to be ahead of the curve on that and be ready for once we do scale to know how we're going to go about that process. So how did you get started on that path? You're the owner of agency agile, correct?
Yeah, yeah.
You were you have a couple of was it ink companies that you've been a part of Iran and you know what what led to this book.
So I just a real quick sort of genealogy of that is I started out as a software developer originally and I had I hated my managers. I thought they didn't know shit about what was going on and and strangely I got promoted into management.
I don't know what it was maybe they got tired of hearing me whine about stuff. And I ended up being a project and program manager for a lot of my career we started Inc five started consultancy management consultancy one in 500 award a couple times for rapid growth is what that awards for.
Nice at some point along that path. I started saying, we just got to know how to do this better. And in the book I tell and when we do the pod the actual podcasts I'll tell the more detailed story of it.
But basically I had a wake up moment when I thought, what if we just take all the managers out of the room, what would happen?
What if we send the managers home for a day, does more productivity get done or not. It turns out it does the more productivity does happen when we have less managing and especially the more complex our environment the more complex the work that we're doing more
complex the managers they are the more it's true. And so, ironically, very little managing as far as superior to a lot of managing. And so that started a career for me 200 plus organizations we've taught these concepts to and a lot of them not all of them but a lot of them
have done a great job and have happy people and highly productive organizations. It's interesting it. I can see how that would have a would bolster a positive effect, or rather an effect of change and productivity.
It also reminds me though of the. Have you ever heard of the sociological research study they did on rhinos, and the right the young rhinos.
It's fascinating. It's very, very easy to find. For anybody who's listening into this you can find that online, but it talks about how the performance, like of the rhinos, certainly improved they were able to get more done and do more when they took the old
rhinoceroses out of the ecosystem.
On the flip side.
The rhinos eventually destroyed the habitat.
And they ended up, they ended up ruining the balance of the ecosystem in a whole, because they did not have the wisdom of the elders there to keep them and keep them in sync and lock so I do think that there's a balance to be had on both sides of that and the point
of the study was to point out how we are putting our old folks into homes, and we're not utilizing their wisdom and and understanding the value of those who've come before us even though they can't contribute in the same ways that they used to.
There's an amazing amount of contribution that they can provide when we, but we need to figure out how do we facilitate as a society, what that integration looks like and I think that's your point right and not to destroy management and say no we don't need management.
But there's a, there's a couple of optimizations or changes that we could be looking at is that fair to say. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I'm fascinated you know what I'm going to be doing right after this recording right.
The, I think the, so that's why I said if we send the managers home for a day. Is there more absolutely. I didn't say get rid of them. I said, right. So, you do need managers but we just don't need them all the time.
Right. And I think that's back to your Rhino studies that what what are the right moments that we should be managing and, and therefore not managing during those other moments. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward is going to get more and more fun, more more engagement as well by people to participate in the show, and thank you for giving us your time and attention,
have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision for yourself.