All right, Toby, we're back.
We made it to the third
episode of Processed Det.
I don't even think our moms have listened yet, but we did get a total of,
I think, 11 people, which probably are all bots.
It's probably Jenny. I trying to steal our ideas.
We're pretty big on the West Coast, but I noticed that we're surging
on the East Coast. They're trying to weigh in.
We're just spreading. It's it's crazy.
Again, we're going to try to do this in five minutes, which we have not been
successful yet. So this might become the 10 minute Processed Det podcast.
But today we're talking about accountability gaps.
And so we're going to spend a couple of episodes just talking about how we
just really defining Processed Det what it is.
I think we all kind of live with it
and we we just haven't had a word for it.
And so today we want to talk about one of our concepts, which is
just accountability gaps.
Chris, I love this.
I think we all have have routines that we get into.
And we may not like the routine, but it's our routine.
And so, you know, before we started recording, we were talking
just a little bit about what are some really practical examples of Processed Det?
I think the idea of tech debt is something that people are aware of
because we know the technology changes fast, but a lot of our processes don't.
And so when we talk about Processed Det, one of the first things
that came to mind for me was somebody's doing a task.
They don't like how they're doing it.
They don't want to be the only person doing it.
But then they want to foist the task on us and tell us how to do it.
Oh, and so that's my those are the most frustrating
process issues for me, where if you don't want the accountability, that's fine.
But let's run with it.
Is that what's bad?
Or talk to me about how you see the accountability gap playing with process.
Oh, I think it's total process that like when when there's when
when there's not accountability for something that's supposed to be done.
Yeah. It's it's either two things.
It's either an accountability gap.
Or it's literally what I would call another concept that I that we have
is just a Pandora's process, which is basically something
that's just been around forever. Yeah.
We're not really sure why we do it, but we continue to do it and do it well
or poorly or not do it at all.
But for some reason, we have to do it.
And that's that's, you know, I call that Pandora's processes
because there's no real reason why it happened.
But I do but I do I do love that.
I do love the idea of just accountability gaps, because what I've
what I've seen a lot throughout my career is where people will kick off
the perfected process before someone actually does anything.
And it never works like it never works the way that you want.
The person that created is basically bird dogging.
They find out that they built the thing wrong.
You have to undo four different things.
And so like I've seen that so often.
And then, you know, the other thing that you see from an accountability
standpoint is we're all busy. We're so busy.
And yet we don't have reports around what we're actually being held accountable to.
And so it's kind of like when you tell your kid, I mean, our kids are in college.
I've got one so but like when you tell your kid, I want you to clean your room.
You got to do the dishes. You got to mop the thing.
You got to clean the bathroom, you know, do all the things like that never works.
You say, hey, can you help me do the dishes?
They're like, sure. Yeah.
About to start. I love that.
I love that example of kids and just household chores.
You know, I I grew up in a house where where mom did all the magical things,
which made us kind of useless as adults.
Right. Yeah.
Much to the chagrin of my first roommates in college, they're like,
what the hell's wrong with you? You don't know how to clean a toilet.
I thought I thought these were self cleaning. They're full of water.
What else do you need from me?
And yeah, we just had these magic sprites that came through our and did those things
named mom. And so it's so funny.
You're right. Now, as a parent, like I want I want to try to prepare my kids.
It was it was such a gift, but it had a cost.
Yeah. Yeah.
And the lack of engaging me in the process and household chores.
Yeah. You know, I'm sure it had everything to do with I can try to coordinate you five monsters
to actually do something productive, which usually happened on Sundays right after church.
Like five minutes. Let's let's do a SWAT team attack.
But now, like I don't have that motion. And so the process debt is is in this case,
the maintenance cost is less for me to do it than to engage kids and tasks are going to resist.
And it's not it's not a pleasing thing for me.
And I know the consequences because I had to live it, as did those poor roommates,
you know, and that's the past spouse. So yeah, there's a lot.
You know, it's it's funny because like I knew you were talking about kids, obviously,
you know, about business. But if you think about like one of the things,
one of the statements I've said in the past is like people when they don't believe there's
a boundary that's going to get them in trouble, they just do microbe you need to be at least
right where it's like and if you're a kid, right, if you're a kid, you don't do your chores
and see how much you're going to get yelled at. And if you don't, if you just get yelled at
and don't do your chore, you're fine. Right. Well, as a as a business professional,
you don't fill out the PowerPoint. Yeah.
You don't do the status update and you wait to see what happens. And sometimes you find out that,
oh, my gosh, no one cares. You don't send this. You don't send the email.
And so like it's interesting, like what happens on the you know, we talk we talked a lot about
authority and the importance of authority, where if the authority that's supposed to hold you
accountable doesn't on these things, you know what happens? Just doesn't.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This this accountability gap is a big piece. And and I think, you know,
the the element that comes to mind as we're talking this through is it's it's a two party thing,
just like communications. I have to defend it, but it doesn't happen until it's received.
And the same is true with some of these tasks. And so, yeah, letting go of how
is an essential part of turning that absolutely over. If you want to go to how then roll up your
sleeves and scrub that toilet bowl or whatever the case is. Oh, for sure. The the business.
The other thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny, too. Like, you know, you've got like,
I don't know, you get these minor mutiny things, but then like.
Like I, I truly believe that people want to work and want to do a good job. Yeah. But it's just
it's just when they're not aligned and they don't know how they're going to be held accountable
and they don't know how it fits in. Yeah. And and it's it just becomes another another one
of those things. It's so hard to like get behind. And then like the other thing is like if you're a
manager, you don't want to just hold people. But then you give people 12 million tasks and then
they don't do it. And then like if you're always chasing. Right. It means it means you haven't
ritualized a good process. Like, you know, I love that. You know, everybody talks about, hey,
well, we do scrum. You're like, well, what does that mean? Like, it's a great word. I appreciate
scrum. I think everybody should do it. But like if you go to four different businesses, you probably
see six to 12 different scrums like like and it definitions different, like what the goal is,
is different. Like it's just out of like people just don't like they do their best. Yeah. But like
but you know, and then then then what happens is it's like then you because then you have the
anti-scrummers where they're like scrum doesn't work. You're like, well, you're doing it wrong
or you don't have a purpose for it. Like one of the funny things that and I think we've talked
about this a little bit where like everybody's like that could have been handled with a meeting.
That meeting could have been handled with an email. It can't know it can't like it just can't. Like
I really want it to like I really do. But it's just not going to happen because there's no
closure. Like if at least if you get people in the room, there's this perception of them listening
even though they're probably in their phones or you know, sending messages on Slack. But like there
is no there is no like if you send an email like we don't read all of our emails. And so that
closure of like that closure of the doing of the work or the ritual of doing the work is just is
just critical. Chris, I love that call that call out and here we are just past five minutes as we
always are. But I want to go back to the comment you just made and it's that their process
in a manufacturing in a very generic sense process is just about transforming an input
and creating an output. But when it comes to relationships and all of these routines and
rituals like Scrum, but how we bring together those the maintenance cost isn't getting the
work done. The maintenance is the relationship layer. And I think there's a lot about process
that the same tension that we're navigating with doing the dishes or have the kids do it.
Or is it Scrum or is it not Scrum? Part of it is just some shared ownership. And so I love that.
I love that as we move forward and continue to call out some examples of process that but yeah,
accountability gap is at the heart of it. And you're right. Yeah. If it's not well understood,
if it's not well defined, prepare yourself for Pandora's box of craziness. Because there's
a million ways to skin a cat I've been told. I think I'm only 73 ways to skin a cat myself,
but I'm working on it. No, there's always time. Well, we are at time. We just made it over 10
minutes. So we've made it to the 10 minute podcast. Toby, thank you so much for your time.
Hey, thanks. See you next time. It's a deal. All right. See you soon.