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Hey, what's up, Toby? It's episode five of Processed Net, the podcast.

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We are going to just shoot for 10 minutes now.

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We've failed. Whoa, whoa.

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Time. We're going to go.

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It's going to be the 10 minute podcast.

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And, you know, eventually it'll be like maybe the eight hour podcast.

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I'm just kidding. I think that it just I hope that I hope that listeners.

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I was about to say readers, maybe readers, too.

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Appreciate how much value we're trying to pack into five minutes.

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I mean, it's really our goal. It's value add.

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It's key.

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One of the topics we want to talk about today is a process that is

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the new employee conundrum.

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And the new employee could be a new boss or the new employee could be a junior intern.

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But I think one of the one of the.

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I don't know if it's the best, like one of the one of it's not the best.

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It can't be the best.

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The most problematic,

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percent problematic and maybe invisible, like process debts or just

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the new employees, if you're a junior, you see it right.

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If you're a new employee from the outside, what do what do new employees,

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especially the executives that come in, what do they say?

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They always say, well, at my old company.

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That's right. And that is the start of process debt right there.

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I love that you touch on

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welcome to the company.

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And at least in my experience, you know, having consulted now for for 20 some years,

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they're like, oh, yeah, I've got it right here.

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It's out on SharePoint.

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Oh, or yeah, I've got the thing you're looking for.

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It's on system X, you know, at least in the old filing cabinet world.

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It was there or not there.

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Yeah. Now, I don't know if it's Schrodinger's files or not going on,

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but, you know, it may be there, but I can't find it.

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And then they tell me you're in the wrong universe.

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So but the piece you just touched on, though, a new employee,

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that's that's a junior resource already, right?

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We can say, well, this is how it works.

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Yeah. And the earlier they are in their career, you know, myself included,

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I'm like, I have no idea. I've never, you know, I've never served elephant at a dinner.

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So you tell me how we do this.

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Yep. Whereas a manager coming in is a very different dynamic, right?

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They have experience. They also have authority.

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Yep. So they don't have to necessarily take what you're offering.

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Yeah. Oh, I'd love to hear it sounds like you might have a story around

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onboarding a manager to process.

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Well, what I can what I would say is that the junior employees

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are kind of the canary in the coal room, right?

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Where like they literally and my brother has said this for a really long time.

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He has this quote where bad process kills good people.

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And and I feel like those new employees or the more junior employees,

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they're just given it everything you've got to follow the rules a lot of times.

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And they don't know what rules can bend, right?

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Like as you get older in your career, you're like, well, they're excited.

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But I'll just let them say, yeah, that'll be fine. It's OK.

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Knock yourself out. Yeah.

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You're like and then the new, you know, the new the new employees

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just running around on fire, just like losing their mind.

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And I remember being that junior employee and being like,

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why are all the old people just they don't care about this?

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Do they not see how important this is? Right.

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Apparently, it wasn't important, but I had no idea.

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I had no way to know. But so like so again, when you bring a new employee in,

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like they if you lean on them to say, hey, look,

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anytime you see something that you don't understand or can't find,

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you will find broken process to the left, to the right.

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You will find it, like you said, in one drive, you will find it in confluence.

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It's all these knowledge based sources that are scattered all over the place.

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And then on the opposite side, like you have just new bosses that come in.

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And they the problem with the challenge with the new boss and I, you know,

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I do the exact same thing, which is like

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you come in with like that just that confirmation bias

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and that like idea of like what I'm used to.

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I know really well.

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Right. Like you just you just that that known that known intelligence of like,

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well, that might which is why they say, well, at my old company.

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Oh, sure. Right.

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It's because they knew it and they understood it like probably like.

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Even subconsciously, they understood some stuff that they didn't understand.

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Whereas in a new company, you're learning new rituals.

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You're learning new, new norms, new standards, new ways to do thing.

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And so there's always going to be when you come in with authority,

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there's always going to be this push towards.

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Wait a sec. This is I'm going into the unknown.

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Let's go back to the known, which was the old company,

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which it won't work in your new company. It just won't.

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Yeah. Chris, let me ask, because this the other distinction here is,

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is, you know, the frame of reference that a new

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less experienced resource has, they don't have the context.

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They don't have the work experience or familiarity with the generic process,

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let alone the unique versus a manager who has a little bit experience.

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And so if we were to flip this, you know, we all have process debt

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and anybody coming in with fresh eyes is going to ask a lot of obvious questions

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that we don't have good answers for. And so let me start with the new hire.

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So we jokingly refer to it as like new employee hazing.

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Yeah. And that's not our intention.

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It's just that we can't, we don't know what we don't know

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because we've been at it for so long.

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So for those that are listening, they're like, hey, I've got a new guy

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I'm bringing on or I've got this awesome young woman that I'm excited to join our team.

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What is it that that new manager could do for that new employee

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to reduce the fatigue from process debt?

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Yeah, that's a really good question.

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Can I pass? Can I phone a friend?

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Can I phone a friend?

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No, it's a really tough one, right?

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Like, I think it depends on how mature your processes are. Right.

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And like, like, where where does where's the home for things?

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Right. Like some of it's easy, like HR, their home is in whatever.

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Yeah. Oftentimes, a scare system.

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Yeah. But they say they roll in.

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Yeah, I think some of that is just is just letting them know that, like,

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you as a manager want to know what's going on.

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Like, you want to know where those pain points are, because and I've said this before this

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where like oftentimes when we run into bad process or bad design,

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we think we're dumb as human beings.

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And the reality is, is we are not we are not dumb.

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It's just bad design.

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And so if you think of like this.

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This comes from a book.

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I'm going to forget the name of the book, so I'm going to just move on.

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I'll remember it later.

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I read the book once. But. Yeah.

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But if you just think of like doors, like just doors to buildings,

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like one of the places where I've worked in the past, they had a door that like is like a slider.

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It's like one of those barn barn sliders. Right.

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And but it has the long pole.

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And so people will basically push on that pole to push it open or pull it.

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Oh, my God. And it's a slider.

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And so like every time every time, you know, some new person comes into that into that

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bill into that room and doesn't know, it's just like this embarrassing thing.

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And like, I think for new employees, they run into that a lot.

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And instead of, you know, building psychological safety in the team

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and really helping people like just understand that, like, look, we're not perfect here.

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And especially if it's a fast growing company or a startup like, yeah, it's just going to be chaos

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on top of chaos. But like asking about that and then not trying to change everything, but just pick something.

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Yeah.

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Make a home, find a home for it.

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Where's the home for this?

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Because we're smart.

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People are smart.

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But if they don't know where home is, they don't know where to go and find if they don't know the first step,

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they'll just give up or spend an exorbitant amount of time looking for something.

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Chris, I, I, you just reminded me the the door is a great example,

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because we have these virtual doors all over our business process.

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Right.

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And so one of my favorite clients that I had the opportunity to work with for several years said,

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I just need somebody to take a first pass at try to document what we do.

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Yeah.

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And so sometimes that new hire who doesn't have a lot of context yet, what they can do is capture what they're being told.

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Yep.

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And then try to put those things into not just the sequential order they were presented in,

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but then to suggest, is there a better way to do that?

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And then to suggest, is there a better, more logical way that makes sense to you as a with fresh eyes?

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The magic in my mind becomes not the first person that documents it, but the next person that comes in.

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And now we ask them, here's whatever crap level of process documentation.

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We want you to listen as we describe it and make notes about where we're following and where we're not following it.

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With the time you've taken two or three passes, not only do people have a higher level of ownership in the process documentation,

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because their fingerprints are on it, but they also know that it's not theirs to care and maintain for.

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And so some of the stronger work teams, and you mentioned on a past episode, the power within silos,

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but a lot of the culture becomes when one leader says, well, we'll get there.

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We're not there yet.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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We'll iterate across new team members.

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We'll take turns.

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Yeah.

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So, and some of it is just building that culture of like, I'm not going to answer your question.

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Because in every company, Bob somewhere knows everything about everybody.

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He's been there for 15 years.

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He's been on some days.

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But if you want to know where the skeleton is, you just go to Bob and Bob will give you the answer.

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Right. But the reality is, is building that culture around, did you go to this place first?

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Yeah, I'd love it.

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And like the reality is, is most of the time we're at time again, it happens so fast.

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Anyway, what's interesting is that time can, like what happens for those new employees is they

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instantly, how are they being trained to learn the business?

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And I would say most of the time by week four, they basically are finding the internal power

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structure and they're going to people. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that.

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But the problem is, is like the problem from a process debt standpoint is it's not going to be

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consistent. You're consolidating power among certain people. You're building little fiefdoms

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versus saying, hey, look, did you check the X, did you check the XYZ first?

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And it doesn't matter what the XYZ is. It could be Confluence or Sharecoin.

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Sure. Yeah.

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It's all spreadsheet. The word doc, a folder does not matter.

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On tablets. Yeah.

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Yeah. But did you go to that one place to check it for you? Did you bring your yes?

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Don't tell. Chris, I love that. Hopefully we'll have some listeners share stories as we kind of

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forward. But I really like that as an alternative model. And it's like, here's the five keepers of

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our stories and our knowledge. And so on topic A, go talk to Bob. On topic B, go talk to Sue.

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B, you and I, and I realized we're almost at 12 minutes, but you and I are this crossover.

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We're starting to see boomers. We grew up under boomer leadership and now they're all retiring.

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And so a number of organizations have this enormous exposure where people leave with all

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that information in their head. So yeah, it's just about capturing that and putting it in and

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pointing people to just that one page. Right? Like a hundred percent of like, look, and these

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are living, right? These are living documents. Someone owns it. You know, or you rotate ownership,

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but you just get it. You just build that culture of like, let's build a culture of documentation.

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And you know what? With AI coming around, a culture of documentation is going to be a

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different year. It's just going to be. Yeah. What happens when your learning model is based

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on how you would do work? Your actual work. Cause like a lot of stuff, it's just a mess.

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And it's hard, right? Like it's an infinite problem because you're always learning,

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you're always growing. So you have to have a lot of grades, but you also have to have a

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discipline and culture that supports it. So we are done. You're finished. Bonus, bonus episodes.

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Bonus minutes. We're going to, man, we're just going to keep making it longer. So what's going

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to happen is like our, our, our listenership is going to go from 10. These guys are terrible.

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All right, man. Thanks for your time. All right. All right. See it.