Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to episode number 18 of the Process Debt Podcast. Today,
I want to talk about how difficult it is to just get people to adopt. And I think that this is
really a manager's biggest challenge, which is to stick out, to basically sell themselves,
to build value, and also maintain just the business structure. And I think it's really critical for
managers really not to turn over the apple cart here. And what do I mean? Well, I think a lot of
times businesses, especially as you head up in the ranks, what matters oftentimes is whether
something's pretty or whether it's polished. And a lot of times the person who's the flashiest
can win. And so whoever has the best PowerPoint wins. And that may or may not have the best
underlying data, the best underlying strategy. And so typically what happens is there ends up being,
you know, these games where it's like, well, let's make this better. Let's always perfect,
always change, always change, always change. Well, if you're an executive and you're seeing
these PowerPoints and they're always different, it is just ridiculously hard to be able to channel
just a task switch or a context switch between different formats, different files, different sizes.
One of the things that I've thought about as I've, you know, just seen a lot of PowerPoints in my
career is oftentimes you don't know the size of the thing. And so you get a PowerPoint and it's
just a single deck and, you know, and it could be a single page on that deck and you spend, you know,
five minutes on that page. And really what you're talking about is, you know, maybe a thousand
dollars worth of effort or, you know, a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there. And then
you go to another page and you're talking about a million dollars or, you know, maybe 10 million
dollars. That that's the ask. And it's so hard to know how it compares to the whole. And so I was
talking to a buddy today, it would be really nice on these PowerPoints if you could see, you know,
where does this compare to the whole? So let's say your budget is a hundred million dollars
and you want to spend 10, you could put it like a little pie chart up there where it showed 10%
so that you could, you could actually see, hey, is this, is this a big problem? Is this a little
problem? Is this something in between? So that you actually know where to spend your effort,
because you're not going to, you're not going to move mountains by spending, you know, all of this
time on very, very little minute crazy things. And so. I think one of the, one of the other
things that I've thought is like, anytime you change stuff, like that, that constant change
just leads to this constant, constant switch. And so I was, I was looking somewhere and it was
talking about Tim Cook at Apple and he was, they were talking about how he had his, his days were
managed to the tee that basically, you know, down to the essential minute, he, he was basically
managed. And I think he had that structure. And you see this in athletes too, where when they,
they have a pre, a pregame routine that is just drilled in. And so it literally does not change.
And what they're trying to do, I think oftentimes is they want to have as much control over as much
as they can. So that when they go into either a game, you know, or Tim Cook sees a presentation,
like he's able to be fully engaged. And so he is, he has that, that focused effort. And so I,
one of the, one of the things that I would just ask, like, especially if you're a manager is,
could I get three departments or three different teams to do this change with me?
And I think if, if managers and, and executives just simply slowed down a little bit
and thought to themselves, okay, I'm making a change, but one, am I deviating from the standard?
And two, am I, could I, if I am deviating from the standard, could I get this, could I get buy-off
and adoption from three other teams or departments? I think if managers would just simply ask that one
little question, or the other question I like to ask is how will we do this in three years?
And I think it just, it just, it broadens the range so far, because a lot of times we're dealing
with deadlines. So we're just, it's just scrapping to get everything done. And at the end of the day,
and at the end of the day, it's if, if, if I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it for the next
three years, what decision would I make? And I think what would happen is I think you'd make a lot,
a lot less changes, but the changes that you make would be a lot more strategic.
And it would force people into basically a common pattern that could be consumed in, you know,
specifically in meetings or in presentations, that you could be more grounded so that you could see
the same thing. I think that's what the brilliance of, of, of Bezos at Amazon saying, Hey, look,
we're going to do a six pager and that's just how you're going to do it. And they would go into
meetings and step one was read for 15 minutes. And so he gave people space to consume, to ask
question. He forced people to write down on paper what they were thinking and clarify their thoughts.
And I think that that's, that's just really brilliant. And I, you know, they use that,
they use that PR, the PR pre FAQs. Yeah. PR FAQs. Basically a great way that Amazon does,
does their work. But, you know, so today, the, you know, the topic on this Fix It Friday,
and it looks like we're going to be close to five minutes. So I blame Toby for going over on all the
other ones is really ask yourself with three teams, especially if you're in a, in a role of management,
ask yourself, could, could three teams do this? And would we do this the same in three years?
And if, if the answer is to either of those is, ah, I can't even, you know, I can't get my,
I couldn't get three other teams to do this. And we're not going to do this in three years.
Then just don't make a change. Like stay the same, make incremental smaller changes and get
better over time. Thanks again.