Hey, what's up Toby?
We've made it to number 21 of the Processed Debt Podcast.
No one has asked us to stop yet that we know of.
We've gotten no cease and desist.
So that means we're not successful.
Hey, special shout out to our listener and Boise.
Oh, there's a couple.
Yeah, a couple.
I understand even somebody said, you're top of mind, buddy.
I'd love to buy you lunch.
I got lunch out of the podcast.
So I am officially an influencer now, influencing ones of people.
I love it.
It was only a matter of time, my friend.
Well done.
All right, today's topic.
Yes, today's topic, not specifically, but layoffs.
Yeah.
Or just changes in employment.
Well, if you haven't been part of it recently,
you're probably only one degree of separation
from somebody whose job has been threatened as budget cuts come along
or has been part of some of the governmental layoffs.
But even in the public space, with all the uncertainty,
people are tightening their belts.
And so this topic of layoffs today, what's crossing my mind,
and we were talking just a little bit before the show,
was what happens when people that have really defined and held
ownership over a process are removed from the equation?
Yeah.
These are the process owners.
Maybe they're the conveners.
Maybe they're the people that drive the chopping wood consistency
that makes a good list happen.
Chris, you and I both have laughed over the years about we've
had more than one or two jobs a decade.
Oh, gosh.
And we've been part of leaving and part of being left.
Yeah.
What's your thought?
I mean, you probably had a person or two leave and the process
that they owned was left in the porch.
Well, what's funny is my first job out of college,
this was back in, I don't know, let's go 25 years ago, just for fun.
Back in the old days.
Back in the day.
Most people won't remember this, but Microsoft
didn't always have a ribbon.
And that was a major shift.
And back in the day, I was writing some code.
And so actually, right out of school, I eliminated my job.
And it must have been six months.
I eliminated my job and half another person's job.
And so this was my first layoff.
You're the original Doge.
I literally am doing nothing.
Right?
Then I get bored and I'm like, let's tie the production schedule
to purchasing, because I was in the purchasing department.
So I tie it and I'm just so bored.
Because I literally am done with my week's worth of tasks
by noon on Monday.
I'm just faxing out.
I literally, OK, this is how long ago it is.
I basically run my report, which basically tells me all my open orders.
My system tells me whether I need to expedite it or not.
And I fax it.
I literally fax a whole bunch of these things to people.
And then they send it back and they say, we can't expedite it.
So then this is how I got my first layoff.
And I don't know why my boss let me go and do this,
because it took a long time for me to figure this thing out.
But he was just like, hey, the new kid seems to be a wizard at Excel.
So I build this whole thing out.
And then by the end, I think I went through two rounds of layoffs
and I was part of the third.
But by the time the third rolled around, I was answering phones
at the front desk, because I literally hit.
But who knows what happened with that thing after I left?
So there's some zombie magic probably to this day.
Oh, yeah.
Still colliding production schedules and procurement activities.
And it probably just treats it like a fragile artifact, right?
Oh, yeah, because if it breaks, who are you going to call?
Yeah.
You apparently didn't leave a forwarding address,
because it doesn't sound like they're tracking you down.
I was young and stupid.
And I password protected it.
And then they found out about it.
And I was like, oh, a gooser is about to stop.
Make your deal on this password.
I'll hook you up.
No, but I think it's interesting, right?
I think what I left, they probably used for quite a while.
And then it just entropyed.
And then they stopped using it at some point.
Or maybe it's still being used.
I don't know.
But what's interesting is you've got the people that leave,
and you've got wealth of knowledge that kind of leave
and disappear.
And the true loss, I think you can't account for it.
There's no way to account for it.
I think the accounting or the recognition,
we talk a lot about is it discoverable?
Is it visible?
I love those themes that you bring up a lot.
And I think about it so oftentimes,
it's not discoverable because somebody is still refining it.
Or maybe they don't have time to document it
and start to mentor somebody.
So it's only discoverable when they're in the room, right?
And therefore not transferable.
And so yeah, if they would have at least
bought an annual license key, they
could at least get an email from you
about how to make that spreadsheet work.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's pretty crazy.
And I think the same thing happens when people leave,
and then also when people show up, right?
Like I can't tell you how many times people are like, well,
my last company.
And what's interesting, I think oftentimes
is like most companies don't have a strong process culture.
And so when someone shows up and they say,
hey, I'm going to be in my last company,
there's not this like major like almost like coup against it
where it's like we don't do stuff that way.
Like we do, because most processes don't support people.
Those processes are what we would call sad man work.
Full of misery and extra innings and unpaid Saturdays.
Let me go get my Crayola crayon and draw some things.
Well, you know, you make a really interesting point
because when we bring somebody on,
even if internally we see ourselves as a process culture,
I don't know that I've ever heard somebody define
what that experience would look like.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, think about an organization
that you've been involved with maybe recently,
maybe further back in your past.
But, you know, think of an organization maybe
where you felt like there was a very clear process culture.
And the answer could be, mm-hmm, still waiting.
But I'm curious about how would you describe that culture
without naming the innocent and the guilty parties alike?
I would say that it just gets skipped.
But if they do have a process culture in place,
how might you explain what it means?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, I mean, if you had a process culture,
it would be like, look, these are the tools.
These are the reports, right?
Like, I think what you would see is you would see,
you would see almost like three,
like you could go to three different teams
and things would be done in the same way, right?
And I think the challenge, I think where people fall down here
is they don't have a standard.
And so they either push, well,
they either are too standardized or too loose.
And so where they're like too standard
and they don't create, there's no autonomy,
then I think people just rebel.
And they're saying, I'm gonna do it this way, right?
And then the other thing is oftentimes you don't see
a reporting structure that basically goes up a level
and goes up a level and goes up a level, right?
So like, I would say if it's done correctly
is as you look at a report and you scale down a layer
and then you go down another layer,
you would actually see processes that support it.
But my guess is most of the time you rip off those reports
and what you find is like scaffolding and duct tape
and it's just not put together.
Right.
And some of that I think is because oftentimes
process is driven by reporting.
It's not driven by the people doing the work.
Yeah.
And so you think about the people that come in,
they're like, I wanna see this thing.
Right.
And so because of the thing that they wanna see,
they drive process which may not actually even be accurate.
Like the thing that we don't talk about with reporting
is what's the precision on this thing?
Let's not make anybody too nervous.
Years ago when I was in telecom,
I sat in the sales organization and I had to get fortune
to work with a really exceptional process-minded manager.
Yeah.
He had already done a good job.
Several of these guys had come over from MCI.
Oh yeah, yeah.
We're back before Sarbanes-Oxley
and all the corporate malfeasance
that pulled a bunch of people.
For our young people, what was MCI?
Yeah.
Back in the day when the only phone in your house
was stuck to the wall, MCI was that forced person
that you could pay less money to talk to somebody
more than five miles away.
Got it.
Okay. Right.
That phone that was on the wall.
Like the invention of the cell phone.
This was-
Brought to us, it brought to us the where are you at?
Because you never had to ask that
because you were always at home stuck to some line.
It was always super easy.
Are you in the living room or did you take the 40 feet
of phone line into the bathroom or laundry room?
The thing that was so beautiful was
when I joined this organization,
we had a measure of leadership alignment
where RVPs had this high trust in our reporting
and we rounded to the nearest thousand.
Sweet. Right?
Because we're talking about million, two million,
five million dollar a month budgets
that they're supposed to be hitting with their sales targets.
We're not gonna miss by pennies.
In materiality.
Yeah.
But a new senior executive, to your point about reporting,
came in and what he discovered was
my team and I are producing very insightful reports
that precede anything that'll actually hit the books.
We're looking out the sales funnel.
We're doing all this management reporting
but we're rounding to the nearest thousand.
Yes.
His finance organization was chasing their tail
and trying to go out to 17 decimals, like most-
Wanted to go.
They can't reconcile the ninth decimal.
No, that's unfair, but you know these guys.
Yeah, yeah.
And so his solution was take the cowboys
and stick them in finance
and then that'll make it all work better.
And to a degree, we took across some of our secret sauce.
Sure, sure.
We were using Excel and Visual Basic
to do very complex automations
to produce an enormous volume of reporting
because traditionally hours go into reporting
and seconds go into the analysis.
Oh, it's crazy.
But here was a case where we took a strong process culture
out of sales, stuffed it in finance,
and then snuffed it to whatever extent
it could be snuffed out.
Yep.
Right?
It's such a bear.
And that was probably one of those first moments
where I went, hang on, good process doesn't always win.
It should, but it doesn't.
Totally, and that's the new guy coming in and saying,
I found value over here in the corner.
Let's move the value over here.
And then some ways like bastardize it.
Yep.
If people don't understand it clearly
and they can't articulate it, it doesn't exist.
Yeah.
I think that's the sad truth of it.
For sure.
Well, we're just a smidge over five.
Oh, we did it again.
As is often the case, I wanna give a shout out
to our listeners or singular household.
Perfect.
And Edmond, not Montana, just a little north.
Edmonton, yeah.
Edmonton, Canada, yeah.
There you go.
Saskatchewan, I believe, I think, one of the provinces.
I mean, I'm surprised that we have Canadians listening.
I mean, we are the-
It's makes their good judgment.
All right, man.
Or just their ten minutes speaker.
We'll pick it up next week.
Thanks, man.
For real, have a good one.
Bye.