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Well, hello, Toby, we've made it to another Processed Dead podcast.

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And because we haven't stopped and no one's asked us to stop, we're just going to keep

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rolling.

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I have zero restraining orders that have been served last week.

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Nobody was so offended at the idea of actually clarifying requests that they've taken legal

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action.

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So, marching ahead.

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What is this episode 12?

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I think we're at a 12.

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Oh, man, we're so deep into double digits now I've lost track.

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We have done this for so long that we've had episodes fall out of our top 10.

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I know.

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Yeah.

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Let's just pile on here.

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Over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about buffers and manufacturing and

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what a good lean process, but we lose sight of the fact that it relies on trust.

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And so, last week you started to share some thinking you've done around how do you take

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a zero trust process and then really clarify and you introduce this acronym called AXE,

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absorb and then make a choice.

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What's the choosing?

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Taking some kind of action, which is usually what somebody wants and then what's the status?

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What we didn't get to last week that I'd love to hear your thoughts on this week is that

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zero trust process with very clear request and what's expected of fulfillment, that's

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not a world we want to live in.

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As human beings, we seek community.

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And so, if organizations aren't a community, how do you foster that?

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How do you take clearly defined process and expectations that are transactional?

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How do you start to imbue that world with the trust that we all want to live with?

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Yeah.

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I think you have to, I mean, I think part of it and thanks for asking the question,

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but I think part of it is sometimes you ask questions, I'm like, oh.

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That's not the question I want to answer like a good politician.

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I had to think about that one.

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But I think if the community owns the process, and I know we started originally with Toyota,

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but they have a deep, deep culture of the community owning the process, which is really,

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really unique where like here in America, oftentimes, in our manufacturing, it was basically

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very, very structured, which is like, I'm going to count the amount of time that it

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takes my top producer to do XYZ.

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And that's now the new standard.

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And so now the new standard is time to performance, not quality of product output.

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And so whereas Toyota has a completely different approach, which is the community owns it.

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And they started a factory, I think in Tennessee, I think.

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They did a joint thing with GM.

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And one of the hardest things that they had to teach the Americans employees was pull

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the line, stop the entire process.

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And in Toyota, they're like, yeah, that's what we do because their battle is somewhat

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against those inefficiencies.

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And so unless your community is going after the process, now, part of the problem I think

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we have oftentimes is processes get democratized.

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And so there's no standardization as a heads up.

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And so you have basically little pockets of processes that doesn't work.

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But I think that whole community side, what's interesting is where we kind of kicked this

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off was as human beings, if we get in trouble, we seek to solve that problem with trust.

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We often don't seek to solve it with process.

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That's a problem.

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And that's what we naturally do.

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And so our managers who are now lacking trust in us now comes and micromanages us in order

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to build that trust, and then you have a bit of this vicious cycle that just is not helping

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anyone.

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And so I think from a community standpoint, from a work standpoint, I think it's super

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important.

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And I think the first thing, I came up with another acronym because apparently I like

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those.

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But the first one is, it just spells out care, which is you have to be, it has to be a community.

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Like if your work, if your job is not a community, hate to tell it to you, but like people are

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just going to start leaving.

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And that's, it's just going to happen.

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It makes me think of the tragedy of the commons, right?

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That idea that something that might be for shared good has shared ownership.

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Like no one person, otherwise they are micromanaging, they're dictating what makes everybody else.

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And yeah, rarely do we seek that out.

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And so just the idea.

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So to make process more effective, to move beyond a zero trust.

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And then I think that the second word is just assurance, right?

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Which is like, look, if I screw up, if I don't fit in the process, is it going to be safe

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to fail?

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Right?

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So like, I think the story in the US plant with the Toyota was they literally had to

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go grab the guy's hand and the Toyota employee had to take the GM employee and literally

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had to take his hand and have him pull it because he was so scared to get in trouble.

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Right?

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And so that's a community where like, no matter what happens, if you see a problem, there

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has to be that psychological safety, that assurance that you're going to be loved, taken

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care of, you know, whatever.

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So that's, you know, that's a, so C is community.

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I was going to say on that assurance front, you're right.

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Like that permission to fail is exactly how we find our learning edge.

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Right?

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If we're never, if we're never pushing, the other element too here is that idea of you're

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being evaluated as if you're in a kayak, not in a team rowboat.

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It's not individual work when we're a bigger effort.

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You know, play one piece in a process.

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And so understanding how to synchronize, of course, we're going to sometimes be early

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or we'll be a little bit late.

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So that assurance that we don't get beat up while we're finding our rhythm, I think is

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a great call out.

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So CA.

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Yeah.

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CA.

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And I think just one more thing on that is like a lot of companies, a lot of companies

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send mixed messages there.

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Where it's like, we want you to be entrepreneurial because Steve Jobs was.

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Oh, we don't want you to screw up like he did.

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Right?

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And so you can get these mixed messages and so that just basically kills that assurance

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piece where it's like, ah, you say one thing, you know, it's like tell your kids, do what

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I say, not what I do.

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The next, the next, the R is respect.

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There has to be this respect and there has to be respect for around, you know, what you

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do well.

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Yeah.

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Like there has to be respect for, you know, this, you know, being a respectful part of

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the community.

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Yeah.

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One of my favorite elements that falls in that respect is, is you may not have succeeded

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with the task or you may not be competent, but it's not that you've failed.

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It's that you aren't there yet.

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Yeah.

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And you know, so much of parenting I think comes right back into the workplace in terms

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of value, certainly for me and how I interact with others.

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And that idea that somebody may have missed it a little bit, it's just that they're not

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there yet.

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Yeah.

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What you know is regardless of what they've said, they haven't been able to internalize

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it and take action.

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Yeah.

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So that respect that recognizes that sometimes we all need a second run at it.

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So.

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And then the last one is just empower.

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Like you have to be, you have to be in a place where you were allowed to be the very best

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you that you were made to be.

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Yeah.

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Boy, that's a, that's a really beautiful model.

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And I think that you started this by saying there's a difference in mindset, you know,

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and oftentimes as a country of cowboys, rugged individualism, what we're focusing on is what's

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my individual performance?

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How fast you run the Boston marathon as opposed to did your team successfully complete quality

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ideas inclusive, whereas timed metrics are so narrowly defined, we lose sight of the

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whole.

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So.

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Well, what's interesting, like, you know, just in thinking through these things, it's

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like, look, it's like, again, if you have that zero sum, but then you also have that

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community piece and the community is in charge for building that process and fixing the entire

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system.

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Magic, man.

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It's magic.

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I love that.

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Yeah.

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The idea of a well-defined process, I think absolutely is the underpinning.

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Yeah.

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So there's logical flow, each step has a purpose, and then there's validations at key, at key

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points so that it doesn't go too far with weak quality.

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But then we could overlay a sense of community and respect for one another that's acknowledging

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that mistakes happen, but it's not a death now.

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I think it's really beautiful.

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So well, I think Eric, the hard part here is that oftentimes the process doesn't support

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the acts.

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Meaning we're doing businessy things because that's what you're supposed to do, but we

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haven't done the hard work of saying, why are we doing this?

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What's the real purpose of the QBR here?

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Yeah.

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Again, those things should be done, but if you don't know the purpose of them, then what's

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the purpose?

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And so process fails us on the zero sum side and then fails us also on the community side

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because we're trying to solve something that the structure just isn't there.

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I have to say, I kind of got hung up on the businessy things.

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I feel like that-

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I kind of hate businessy things.

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That workshop, do you want to offer a, are we going to launch a workshop around how to

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appear doing businessy things?

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You know where you find when you're doing businessy things, you just ask different levels

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that are doing the businessy things, why we're doing the businessy things.

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That sounds inflammatory.

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Are you picking fights?

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What's going on?

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Am I picking fights?

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I don't know.

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I sit in meetings sometimes and I just think, why are we doing this?

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What's the real value add?

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So this sometimes, maybe this is why I make acronyms.

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I'm not even sure.

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But I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm not absorbing or I'm absorbing body blows.

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That's always fun.

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I don't know what choice we're making.

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I don't know what we're deciding on and I don't know if I'm taking something or not.

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And I don't know if it's like, and sometimes we get really heavy on status updates.

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We love status updates, but what's the purpose of those?

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I know when I've written a status report that I don't care about and it's just a laundry

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list of stuff I've done, but it's not evident that I'm moving the agenda forward.

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That is a wholly unsatisfying week for me.

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I think you run into it in existing frameworks.

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So you run into it where we do Scrum or we do Agile or I've got KBI's or we need RAC

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or we have OKRs.

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There's this assumption that everybody knows what that means, but no one knows what it

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means.

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Bingo.

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I had all the...

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No, you're right though.

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If somebody spews that laundry list, you know that they're in the business of doing businessy

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things, not in...

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Yeah, and those things should be done.

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Those frameworks should be done, but you should understand why you're using them.

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And they don't all belong in one sentence.

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Outside of our part.

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Maybe why I'm so annoyingly stuck on process all the time is because I want to know what

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people do.

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I don't really care about the words.

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I was in an interview one time and they were like, well, how do you do this?

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And I'm like, does it matter?

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Because I'm just going to do it the way you ask me to or the way that I'm supposed to.

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So asking me how something should be done, like, do you do Scrum?

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What are your rituals?

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And I'm like, I'm going to tell you what I do, but ultimately I'm going to have to sneak

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into whatever rituals you have.

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Isn't that interesting?

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Yeah.

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It's oftentimes the, how are you going to do it?

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I don't even think they care.

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I think they're trying to evaluate.

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Can I trust you to deliver the outcome?

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I think they're trying to wrap their head around your method.

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So that's interesting.

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Acts and care.

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Acts and care.

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Trust, trust, trust.

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Putting in the process.

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Yeah.

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Trust, trust is the buffer.

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And if you think about that, like you think about these people that come in and you're

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like, how the heck did they do it?

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They're like confident as hell, but they don't know what they're doing.

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You're like, they got trust.

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So they've got runway.

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God forbid that you're competent and personable.

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Whoa.

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EQ plus competency is a powerful mix.

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Could be dangerous.

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I like that cocktail.

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All right.

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Cool, man.

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Thank you, sir.

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All right.

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See you next week.

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It's a deal, buddy.

245
00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:29,560
Bye for now.