Hey, what's up, Toby? This is Chris.
We are kicking off our next podcast.
I actually forgot which number it is because we've we've done so many.
We're on a roll.
We are. We have been consistent.
And this is podcast.
This is our next best podcast.
You know how you know, you know, I'm an official podcaster.
Let me just tell you. Yeah.
I am an official.
I I first of all, the podcast is not making money.
So let's just start there.
Check because I had to buy I bought a new mic.
Does I need a new mic? No.
But I wanted to feel like a podcaster. Yeah.
And if I had to buy a new mic, I should at least buy a mechanical keyboard
so I could maybe feel like a developer or clickety clack.
So now so process that is it's not quite taking me into debt,
but we are not necessarily making.
Yes, I think we file this in the dress for the job you want.
Oh, I like it.
Yeah, that's it.
I like it. I'll get some sound panels and we'll be we'll be good to go.
Totally. You can't you can't put a price tag on on living the dream.
No, you cannot. All right.
Today's topic, we're talking about debt in general and debt of the process kind.
So you run up a really good comment on just how not all debt is bad. No.
You know, I think I think if we step away from the specifics
of the process for a second and God knows we only have a second
with these five minute podcasts.
Yeah. You know, there's an entire world of of valuable and powerful uses,
whether it's managing your monthly spend with a credit card
that you pay off every month. Right. Yeah.
Or being able to leverage into a home.
Yeah. Yeah. A mortgage allows you to do that versus having to save up
one point seven trillion dollars for a down payment. Right.
So so there's there's mechanisms where debt is a healthy and a positive thing.
You know, we often keep those kinds of debt
only in the financial category, and we don't think about them
in the world of technical debt or assessed debt.
So the question that I might raise is is when we think about process that
does are we saying that it's inherently inefficient or ineffective?
When is some process that the right kind of debt to bring on in an organization?
Yeah. What's interesting is like even from a tech
debt standpoint, if you're not pushing the envelope on the sales,
you're probably not growing. Yeah.
Which means if you have the most efficient process in place,
the world's going to move on you. Right.
And so what's interesting is as you're bringing up debt,
I was just thinking like, how much principal do I have my house?
And then I got a little depressed and that I actually was proud of myself
because I did not run away. Yeah.
But but what's interesting is like room. Yeah.
What's interesting is we should like we should.
We should do appropriate decisions with our debt.
Right. And that's what they're with our business processes.
And so I talk a lot about is this a one time
or is this going to always be the case?
And so you end up finding really good processes.
Yeah. In HR groups.
OK. Why do you see them there?
Why do you observe? Well,
you also have people that don't understand technology,
don't understand the tools, which is a different topic for a different day.
But yeah, but like they they do the same thing, which is hiring. Right.
Yeah. And so what I'm getting at is that process piece
really has more to do with getting resumes.
And you're getting interviews set. Right. Yeah.
That whole thing of like if you're a growing company
or you're a company of any size, you're going to you're going to have.
Employees coming in and out of the work.
And so that that's you know, so that's that's one of those consistent things
where it's like.
That it should be boring.
Right. Like it really should should be like stupid, boring.
And that that that would be a case where that makes sense to invest.
Yeah.
Because a debt a debt that you take on should provide some value.
I agree. Yeah.
It should allow you to access something you couldn't otherwise.
I mean, yes.
That's that's the logic of it.
It has to it has to be more valuable than the cost.
Yes. So I love the example with HR because it makes me think even more broadly.
If these high volume transactions and organization success
assumes your ability to manage your business,
assumes your ability to manage a high volume of activity,
those processes eventually have to get hard.
They have to be highly repeatable, which then means we can start to automate them,
which means we can start to leverage all the tools that we have.
But if I've never gone to market to hire somebody,
I don't know where to place the job ads.
The worst possible thing I could do is turn on the feeder system
to the interwebs and invite 100000 candidates into my world. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that well, well, so so if that's where we should see less process
debt in some of those more critical, you know, high volume transactional things,
what are the places that process that should be incurred?
What are some examples around the business where this early discovery
and taking on a little bit of debt makes sense?
I think you see it in startups a lot. OK.
And so where you essentially are just doing everything you can
to get sales in the door, I think I think it makes sense
if you're if your company's in it in a down cycle.
Right. Where where like your priority, like there becomes this
this almost like I need to survive. Yeah.
Right. On the cash flow side, I'm not even talking the process side.
I'm just talking like I got to pay my bills. Yeah.
I'm glad then then it's then it really should provide all of that focus.
Yeah. And I think where I where I get frustrated
and see process debt the most is really when.
Someone at a level wants a report on a process that's not built.
Yeah. And so the process gets half baked.
And then there's what ends up happening is you have this
reporting layer and no one says, hey, look, how much did that report cost?
Or there's no there's no cost associated with that.
Yeah. And so it's it's almost like being house poor.
Yeah. Right. Where it's where it's like I've and it's not it's like
I didn't understand that when I bought this house
that I would have all the taxes.
And I mean, I've got a four car garage, so I should get four cars.
Right. So like it's it's it's our it's our
ability to consume.
I love that. I love that.
You be well. And I think that so many platforms,
you know, used to be if we even go back just 10 years,
you know, if you wanted reporting, there was only two or three real tools
in the in the space outside of the need of applications.
Today, with APIs and in this
absolute boom of data visualization tools,
people can see them in very different ways.
They can interact with data without having to create
these long standing reports that are always going to be out of sync.
Yeah. So so maybe that's a I think that's a great example of where
not racing to harden the process makes good sense.
We don't know if it's going to deliver the value we expect.
Are there other corners of the business that either shift a lot that come to mind
or that that organizations just rarely understand?
Well, I mean, I think that's a good example.
I think that there's a lot of things that we can do
that we don't necessarily understand well enough to sufficiently harden them.
I think there's, you know, one of the ones that I've thought about a lot
has been just around like the QBR process.
Yeah, the quarterly where you like or any sort of like monthly or
monthly or quarterly or annual process.
Underlying architecture tool that supports that.
And I think where this kind of goes back to the house
analogy is before you buy a house, you always get an inspection.
Right. Right. Yeah.
And one of the things one of the pains that we have in process
that is new employees. Right. Right.
And what can happen is a new employee can come in
and they're they're kind of like that, the carrier, the coal mine,
that they can basically be that voice of reason. Right.
And some of that is just asking, how much does this report cost us
in human effort? God, I hate that.
And then what's what's the value? Right.
Like, I think, you know, it's interesting.
You know, I've spent a lot of time in operations and on the inventory side.
Like everybody wants to have zero out of stocks. Everyone. Yes.
But very few people want to pay the cost
to have those kind of stock levels.
And so it's this up and down,
like this push and pull.
And and I think process that is is is really similar in that ways.
And where there are times where you just have to inspect.
How much does this cost?
And I think sometimes I think one of the things that Kovac did to us
is we've gotten.
Our. We've done it.
We've gone into this habit of more and more meetings
and more and more distraction.
And so oftentimes we're not talking.
We're not just talking the same language.
We're not talking the same.
Also, we're just not talking the same.
We're not communicating. We're not connecting. Yeah.
And so a lot of times we we have these these.
We're talking and the other person's listening,
but we're actually not solving a real problem or all this
or or see is a see, you know, getting a see on the test is good enough, right?
I'm going to put a pin in that.
Leave that in the hangar.
Oh, thank you for joining us for our five plus five five minute podcast.
Join us for the next one.
I want to like I want to drill into this communication.
What's the value of six hours of meetings a day?
Is that the process or is that dead or is that just squirrely?
All right. Thanks, buddy. All right.
All right. Thanks, man. Thanks for your time.