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All right, Toby, we made it another week.

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We are to 11, which is very exciting.

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Love it.

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First thing that I'm very excited about is your meeting invite is create magically memorable

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moments.

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Yes.

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I love it.

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That's our goal.

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Five minutes or more.

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We never invite people to listen for less than five because we're getting started.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Magical moments.

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Love it.

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Well, last week we talked about trust and how it acts as this weird kind of buffer,

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this buffering system like inventory works in a manufacturing plant.

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Yeah.

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And so we're going to drill a little deeper into that.

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Chris, I want to go back to when we left off last week specifically, and we weren't talking

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about cybersecurity, but you said we should be designing process as zero trust so that

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we don't have a process that operates on faith, but simultaneously thinking about how we build

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community.

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And so as you often do, I'd love to hear just kind of like, what has been your reflection

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on that?

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What does it mean to create zero trust process when it comes to development work?

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But also what are those elements of community?

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Any musings on those?

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I have some musings there.

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So I think one thing, like you can't do one without the other.

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I think a lot of times people will try, let's just go grow and not support the business.

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There's always trade-offs.

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And so I think it's very important in coming up with knowledge work and just what that

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value stream is, which is like, look, if we had zero trust, right?

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Then to your point, it's not an InfoSec issue, but it's really about what would we need?

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What would I need if I had a brand new employee and I just knew that they were going to be

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terrible out of the gate?

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And what would I have to do?

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And I think the natural response is to control that one person.

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It's not to fix the system, but it's to control that one person.

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And so I was thinking, right, we've been through that ourselves in our own career journeys

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where you get started and you're like, why are you micromanaging me?

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Well, they don't know what we don't know yet.

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They're trying to find our boundaries a little bit.

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But it is this natural thing, right?

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Which is interesting because if they're doing the micromanaging, it leads to whatever, which

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leads to a lack of trust, which leads to more control, right?

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Which means from that community standpoint that we talked about, it means that that community

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is threatening you.

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Yeah, right, which is it's just it's interesting.

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It's a really interesting dynamic that we run into in businesses.

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And it's interesting too, because, you know, recognizing that our workforce is increasingly

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diverse because we can operate globally.

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It means that we're going to be working with people that don't look like us necessarily.

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They don't have the same backgrounds, you know, are going to have a lot of different

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perspectives.

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And so these a lot of our coworkers may not be people that were part of our community

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that we grew up in, depending on what that experience looked like.

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And so, yeah, I like this.

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I like where you're going with this, because we don't want to micromanage people, but we

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absolutely need to figure out how do we create a process that people can lean into invites

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more trust, the cultivator.

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So well, and also like what you want is you want that community to own the process to

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make it better.

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Right.

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Like that's that's the magical thing is when you have process with zero trust, right.

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Well, you have people that are building the process so good that you have ultimate trust

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in the system.

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Right.

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That's that's where it gets magical.

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So where this led me to was just thinking about what really what is the value stream

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of of knowledge work?

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And so I came up with a little acronym as I would.

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And the acronym is AXE.

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And so the first is as a knowledge.

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Are you talking about chopping wood axe or?

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No, A-C-T-E-S.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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How should you act in a meeting is really what we're talking about.

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And it spells out absorb.

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So absorb knowledge like you're either you're either learning, you're either you're absorbing

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knowledge, learning, growing, changing.

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You're either making a choice.

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You're either taking something like taking ownership of something.

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Or you're doing a status update.

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Like those are the value streams.

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But oftentimes we don't have collection buckets for each one of those.

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Yeah.

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Nor do we define nor do we define them.

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I don't know that I've ever had a mentor or a lead say to me, your number one job right

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now is to absorb.

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Yeah.

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You know, we talk about the fire hose effect like, yeah, hit me with more data.

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Let me see what I can get in.

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But if I'm not following some of those, I'm not moving through the A-C-T-S.

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I never close the loop with the correct back.

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Correct.

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And then the other thing that happens for executives oftentimes is they're just they

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want to they want to contribute to.

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Right.

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And they do.

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And sometimes they're just making stuff up in their head like they would throughout their

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career.

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Sure.

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But someone's like, they're like, oh, no, I was not telling you to choose to go and

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take the thing that I just said.

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I was just talking out loud.

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But I did this to a former boss.

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He said something.

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And I just took it and I ran and I gave it to him and I could tell he was like, oh, really

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good work, Chris.

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But it was not my intention to go and steal two days two days of your work in order for

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you to do that one thought that I just just kind of came out of my head.

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Well, Chris, on that on that point, what I love, because it doesn't contribute to workload

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debt.

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It doesn't create.

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It doesn't create that simple act when when we are working on a solution together, when

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simply by saying I'm thinking out loud or hey, kind of brainstorming in the moment,

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people I'm not assigning you an accountability.

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All I'm doing is through my absorption, I'm playing out some choices in a directive.

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So yeah.

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Well, the other the other thing is like what happens in the meetings oftentimes is they're

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like like you don't know what you're choosing and you don't know what you're taking.

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Yeah.

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And so it's just nebulous.

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Right.

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Like everybody says, well, that that could have been done.

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That meeting could have been solved in an email.

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It couldn't.

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I don't care what you say.

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I don't care who you are.

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It won't.

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And the reason is, is because there's no there's no closing the loop as far as what are you

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choosing and what are you taking?

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Now if you're if you're absorbing stuff, that's fine, but the reason you had a meeting is

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because there's no there's no closed loop for that absorption.

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Right.

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If you're in the room, even if you're on your phone playing games, not paying attention,

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there's a perception of absorption.

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Right.

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And so the reality is the meeting like everybody says this all the time.

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I'm like, no, it won't.

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It just doesn't work that way.

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Because you're and it's not even about it's not even about the company.

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It's not even about the people.

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It's that you don't have a process that returns that circular response.

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Yeah, it is.

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It is interesting.

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I mean, like playing playing tennis with a giant concrete wall between you, you can hit

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the ball over, but you don't know when it'll come back, if it'll come back or where it'll

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come back.

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Yeah.

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Well, and I think sometimes we want we want the perception and not the reality.

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Right.

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Which is why which again is why like people's people struggle with tracking time.

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Yeah, like everybody does.

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And everybody hates it.

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And the reality is, is it because it's not used as a metric to drive efficiency.

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It's used as a weapon.

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It's not used as a driver of let's get better at our craft.

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It's usually a working indicator or it's for billing and administrative purposes, which

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is not a benefit to the person doing the work.

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Yeah, it's the evidence that they've done it or and in case it's even poor evidence.

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Right.

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So so are you suggesting that acts as a way to engage when you're asking for knowledge

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work or you're you're doing it that the thought is to clarify whether you're asking for an

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absorb or a choice or inaction or a status.

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OK, well, I think it depends on what your role is.

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If you're an IC.

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Yeah.

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It's all about clarifying that communication coming down for management.

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Right.

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It's like, are you ask am I just supposed to are you asking me to do something here?

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Yeah.

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So if you're an if you're a manager, you are most likely asking your people to take on

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stuff that you don't want them to and unintentionally.

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Yeah.

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And you don't have a place that's capturing the work that you're asks.

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And so oftentimes it's just rapid fire asks and the poor ICs are just sitting there going

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like, oh, my gosh, I got all these things to do.

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I don't know what it is.

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They're just they're just spinning their tails.

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Yeah.

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And you haven't you haven't like said, oh, well, this is you need to take this.

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Right.

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Or like or they haven't given them what the expected outcome is, because sometimes it's

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like I need to take this, but I just need a rough draft.

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Right.

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Like, right.

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There's been so there's been so many times where my boss is like, I need this updated.

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And you're like, oh, shoot.

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I'm like, where like where would you like this updated?

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Because I don't know where this lives.

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And it's like, oh, on this last thing that we did, and it's like, oh, you are not asking

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me to go and dig deep and and basically like bolt the whole thing together.

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You just wanted a executive slide to present to share.

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Yeah.

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So that that's that's been kind of that's been really interesting in my career.

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What I really like about that, Chris, is that we started with this idea of a zero trust

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process.

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And what I'm really hearing you say is acts as a nice way to clarify what is the response

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to the request you're making.

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And so I'm even thinking about this on a personal level.

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You know, sometimes it's do you just want me to listen or do you want me to help solution

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or just run to the grocery store and get more like help me out?

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I don't.

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What are the parameters?

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And so I really like acts as a way to just clarify what it is that I can do when you're

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when somebody is presenting me with new information, a request.

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So a CTS absorb, take ownership, take action and then at us.

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Yeah.

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Nice.

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We made it through another one.

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All right.

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We're going to we'll come back to it one more week.

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We always drop these on Friday.

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So I like to think of it as fix it Friday.

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It's the best day to actually work on your process.

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Friday.

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Yeah, because everybody's bailing early in your afternoon.

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Hopefully quiet.

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I never bail early.

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And I know you don't either.

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Some people.

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Yeah, I've heard of those people.

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I'm not pointing fingers, but I can from where I'm.

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All right, man.

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We'll catch you next week.

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All right.

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Bye.

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See you.