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Hey, what's up everyone? Welcome to episode number 18 of the Process Debt Podcast. Today,

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I want to talk about how difficult it is to just get people to adopt. And I think that this is

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really a manager's biggest challenge, which is to stick out, to basically sell themselves,

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to build value, and also maintain just the business structure. And I think it's really critical for

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managers really not to turn over the apple cart here. And what do I mean? Well, I think a lot of

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times businesses, especially as you head up in the ranks, what matters oftentimes is whether

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something's pretty or whether it's polished. And a lot of times the person who's the flashiest

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can win. And so whoever has the best PowerPoint wins. And that may or may not have the best

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underlying data, the best underlying strategy. And so typically what happens is there ends up being,

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you know, these games where it's like, well, let's make this better. Let's always perfect,

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always change, always change, always change. Well, if you're an executive and you're seeing

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these PowerPoints and they're always different, it is just ridiculously hard to be able to channel

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just a task switch or a context switch between different formats, different files, different sizes.

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One of the things that I've thought about as I've, you know, just seen a lot of PowerPoints in my

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career is oftentimes you don't know the size of the thing. And so you get a PowerPoint and it's

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just a single deck and, you know, and it could be a single page on that deck and you spend, you know,

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five minutes on that page. And really what you're talking about is, you know, maybe a thousand

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dollars worth of effort or, you know, a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there. And then

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you go to another page and you're talking about a million dollars or, you know, maybe 10 million

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dollars. That that's the ask. And it's so hard to know how it compares to the whole. And so I was

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talking to a buddy today, it would be really nice on these PowerPoints if you could see, you know,

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where does this compare to the whole? So let's say your budget is a hundred million dollars

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and you want to spend 10, you could put it like a little pie chart up there where it showed 10%

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so that you could, you could actually see, hey, is this, is this a big problem? Is this a little

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problem? Is this something in between? So that you actually know where to spend your effort,

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because you're not going to, you're not going to move mountains by spending, you know, all of this

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time on very, very little minute crazy things. And so. I think one of the, one of the other

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things that I've thought is like, anytime you change stuff, like that, that constant change

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just leads to this constant, constant switch. And so I was, I was looking somewhere and it was

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talking about Tim Cook at Apple and he was, they were talking about how he had his, his days were

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managed to the tee that basically, you know, down to the essential minute, he, he was basically

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managed. And I think he had that structure. And you see this in athletes too, where when they,

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they have a pre, a pregame routine that is just drilled in. And so it literally does not change.

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And what they're trying to do, I think oftentimes is they want to have as much control over as much

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as they can. So that when they go into either a game, you know, or Tim Cook sees a presentation,

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like he's able to be fully engaged. And so he is, he has that, that focused effort. And so I,

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one of the, one of the things that I would just ask, like, especially if you're a manager is,

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could I get three departments or three different teams to do this change with me?

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And I think if, if managers and, and executives just simply slowed down a little bit

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and thought to themselves, okay, I'm making a change, but one, am I deviating from the standard?

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And two, am I, could I, if I am deviating from the standard, could I get this, could I get buy-off

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and adoption from three other teams or departments? I think if managers would just simply ask that one

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little question, or the other question I like to ask is how will we do this in three years?

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And I think it just, it just, it broadens the range so far, because a lot of times we're dealing

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with deadlines. So we're just, it's just scrapping to get everything done. And at the end of the day,

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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

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three years, what decision would I make? And I think what would happen is I think you'd make a lot,

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a lot less changes, but the changes that you make would be a lot more strategic.

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And it would force people into basically a common pattern that could be consumed in, you know,

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specifically in meetings or in presentations, that you could be more grounded so that you could see

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the same thing. I think that's what the brilliance of, of, of Bezos at Amazon saying, Hey, look,

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we're going to do a six pager and that's just how you're going to do it. And they would go into

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meetings and step one was read for 15 minutes. And so he gave people space to consume, to ask

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question. He forced people to write down on paper what they were thinking and clarify their thoughts.

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And I think that that's, that's just really brilliant. And I, you know, they use that,

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they use that PR, the PR pre FAQs. Yeah. PR FAQs. Basically a great way that Amazon does,

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does their work. But, you know, so today, the, you know, the topic on this Fix It Friday,

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and it looks like we're going to be close to five minutes. So I blame Toby for going over on all the

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other ones is really ask yourself with three teams, especially if you're in a, in a role of management,

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ask yourself, could, could three teams do this? And would we do this the same in three years?

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And if, if the answer is to either of those is, ah, I can't even, you know, I can't get my,

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I couldn't get three other teams to do this. And we're not going to do this in three years.

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Then just don't make a change. Like stay the same, make incremental smaller changes and get

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better over time. Thanks again.