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Hey, what's up, Toby? This is Chris.

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We are kicking off our next podcast.

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I actually forgot which number it is because we've we've done so many.

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We're on a roll.

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We are. We have been consistent.

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And this is podcast.

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This is our next best podcast.

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This is our next best podcast.

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You know how you know, you know, I'm an official podcaster.

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Let me just tell you. Yeah.

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I am an official.

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I I first of all, the podcast is not making money.

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So let's just start there.

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Check because I had to buy I bought a new mic.

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Does I need a new mic? No.

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But I wanted to feel like a podcaster. Yeah.

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And if I had to buy a new mic, I should at least buy a mechanical keyboard

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so I could maybe feel like a developer or clickety clack.

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So now so process that is it's not quite taking me into debt,

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but we are not necessarily making.

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Yes, I think we file this in the dress for the job you want.

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Oh, I like it.

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Yeah, that's it.

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I like it. I'll get some sound panels and we'll be we'll be good to go.

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Totally. You can't you can't put a price tag on on living the dream.

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No, you cannot. All right.

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Today's topic, we're talking about debt in general and debt of the process kind.

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So you run up a really good comment on just how not all debt is bad. No.

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You know, I think I think if we step away from the specifics

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of the process for a second and God knows we only have a second

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with these five minute podcasts.

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Yeah. You know, there's an entire world of of valuable and powerful uses,

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whether it's managing your monthly spend with a credit card

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that you pay off every month. Right. Yeah.

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Or being able to leverage into a home.

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Yeah. Yeah. A mortgage allows you to do that versus having to save up

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one point seven trillion dollars for a down payment. Right.

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So so there's there's mechanisms where debt is a healthy and a positive thing.

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You know, we often keep those kinds of debt

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only in the financial category, and we don't think about them

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in the world of technical debt or assessed debt.

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So the question that I might raise is is when we think about process that

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does are we saying that it's inherently inefficient or ineffective?

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When is some process that the right kind of debt to bring on in an organization?

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Yeah. What's interesting is like even from a tech

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debt standpoint, if you're not pushing the envelope on the sales,

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you're probably not growing. Yeah.

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Which means if you have the most efficient process in place,

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the world's going to move on you. Right.

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And so what's interesting is as you're bringing up debt,

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I was just thinking like, how much principal do I have my house?

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And then I got a little depressed and that I actually was proud of myself

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because I did not run away. Yeah.

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But but what's interesting is like room. Yeah.

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What's interesting is we should like we should.

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We should do appropriate decisions with our debt.

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Right. And that's what they're with our business processes.

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And so I talk a lot about is this a one time

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or is this going to always be the case?

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And so you end up finding really good processes.

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Yeah. In HR groups.

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OK. Why do you see them there?

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Why do you observe? Well,

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you also have people that don't understand technology,

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don't understand the tools, which is a different topic for a different day.

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But yeah, but like they they do the same thing, which is hiring. Right.

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Yeah. And so what I'm getting at is that process piece

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really has more to do with getting resumes.

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And you're getting interviews set. Right. Yeah.

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That whole thing of like if you're a growing company

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or you're a company of any size, you're going to you're going to have.

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Employees coming in and out of the work.

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And so that that's you know, so that's that's one of those consistent things

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where it's like.

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That it should be boring.

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Right. Like it really should should be like stupid, boring.

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And that that that would be a case where that makes sense to invest.

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Yeah.

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Because a debt a debt that you take on should provide some value.

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I agree. Yeah.

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It should allow you to access something you couldn't otherwise.

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I mean, yes.

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That's that's the logic of it.

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It has to it has to be more valuable than the cost.

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Yes. So I love the example with HR because it makes me think even more broadly.

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If these high volume transactions and organization success

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assumes your ability to manage your business,

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assumes your ability to manage a high volume of activity,

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those processes eventually have to get hard.

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They have to be highly repeatable, which then means we can start to automate them,

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which means we can start to leverage all the tools that we have.

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But if I've never gone to market to hire somebody,

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I don't know where to place the job ads.

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The worst possible thing I could do is turn on the feeder system

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to the interwebs and invite 100000 candidates into my world. Yeah. Yeah.

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I think that well, well, so so if that's where we should see less process

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debt in some of those more critical, you know, high volume transactional things,

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what are the places that process that should be incurred?

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What are some examples around the business where this early discovery

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and taking on a little bit of debt makes sense?

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I think you see it in startups a lot. OK.

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And so where you essentially are just doing everything you can

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to get sales in the door, I think I think it makes sense

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if you're if your company's in it in a down cycle.

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Right. Where where like your priority, like there becomes this

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this almost like I need to survive. Yeah.

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Right. On the cash flow side, I'm not even talking the process side.

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I'm just talking like I got to pay my bills. Yeah.

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I'm glad then then it's then it really should provide all of that focus.

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Yeah. And I think where I where I get frustrated

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and see process debt the most is really when.

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Someone at a level wants a report on a process that's not built.

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Yeah. And so the process gets half baked.

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And then there's what ends up happening is you have this

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reporting layer and no one says, hey, look, how much did that report cost?

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Or there's no there's no cost associated with that.

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Yeah. And so it's it's almost like being house poor.

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Yeah. Right. Where it's where it's like I've and it's not it's like

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I didn't understand that when I bought this house

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that I would have all the taxes.

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And I mean, I've got a four car garage, so I should get four cars.

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Right. So like it's it's it's our it's our

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ability to consume.

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I love that. I love that.

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You be well. And I think that so many platforms,

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you know, used to be if we even go back just 10 years,

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you know, if you wanted reporting, there was only two or three real tools

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in the in the space outside of the need of applications.

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Today, with APIs and in this

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absolute boom of data visualization tools,

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people can see them in very different ways.

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They can interact with data without having to create

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these long standing reports that are always going to be out of sync.

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Yeah. So so maybe that's a I think that's a great example of where

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not racing to harden the process makes good sense.

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We don't know if it's going to deliver the value we expect.

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Are there other corners of the business that either shift a lot that come to mind

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or that that organizations just rarely understand?

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Well, I mean, I think that's a good example.

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I think that there's a lot of things that we can do

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that we don't necessarily understand well enough to sufficiently harden them.

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I think there's, you know, one of the ones that I've thought about a lot

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has been just around like the QBR process.

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Yeah, the quarterly where you like or any sort of like monthly or

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monthly or quarterly or annual process.

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Underlying architecture tool that supports that.

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And I think where this kind of goes back to the house

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analogy is before you buy a house, you always get an inspection.

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Right. Right. Yeah.

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And one of the things one of the pains that we have in process

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that is new employees. Right. Right.

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And what can happen is a new employee can come in

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and they're they're kind of like that, the carrier, the coal mine,

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that they can basically be that voice of reason. Right.

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And some of that is just asking, how much does this report cost us

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in human effort? God, I hate that.

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And then what's what's the value? Right.

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Like, I think, you know, it's interesting.

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You know, I've spent a lot of time in operations and on the inventory side.

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Like everybody wants to have zero out of stocks. Everyone. Yes.

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But very few people want to pay the cost

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to have those kind of stock levels.

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And so it's this up and down,

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like this push and pull.

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And and I think process that is is is really similar in that ways.

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And where there are times where you just have to inspect.

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How much does this cost?

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And I think sometimes I think one of the things that Kovac did to us

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is we've gotten.

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Our. We've done it.

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We've gone into this habit of more and more meetings

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and more and more distraction.

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And so oftentimes we're not talking.

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We're not just talking the same language.

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We're not talking the same.

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Also, we're just not talking the same.

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We're not communicating. We're not connecting. Yeah.

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And so a lot of times we we have these these.

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We're talking and the other person's listening,

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but we're actually not solving a real problem or all this

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or or see is a see, you know, getting a see on the test is good enough, right?

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I'm going to put a pin in that.

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Leave that in the hangar.

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Oh, thank you for joining us for our five plus five five minute podcast.

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Join us for the next one.

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I want to like I want to drill into this communication.

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What's the value of six hours of meetings a day?

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Is that the process or is that dead or is that just squirrely?

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All right. Thanks, buddy. All right.

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