Hey, what's up, Toby? We've made it to Processed Ed podcast number 22.
I mean, 26 is half a year.
We're closing in. Let's get home.
We're going to get there. And by the end of the year, we might have, you know, by year in, we might have hundreds of listeners.
Hundreds.
I recently noticed we're surging in the metropolitan area surrounding Dubuque, Iowa.
It's, you know, the analytics in this thing.
Spectacular.
Yeah, I mean, we're not making any money. We've got no sponsors.
I will let you know that we did tell Fabletics that they did a poor job.
So that sponsorship opportunity is out because they took your offer.
We burned that.
If there were any paper click, boy, they'd have to click the hell out of it to recoup the money I lost to those jackals.
That's crazy.
That's the term just for the listeners out there, nervous about their children.
So, there you go.
Hey, what are we talking about today, Chris? Besides...
Today's topic is delegation without accountability.
Whoa, that never happens.
Is this another fictional thing like birthdays and...
We want it to as we get older. We want birthdays to be fictional. We want to be like, I mean, when I was 18...
I'm ready to Benjamin Buttons, man. Yeah.
So, talk to me about...
Yeah, what brought this to mind, this idea of delegation without accountability?
There's a couple things. So, I've been listening to Stolen Focus, which is a book on, you know, basically how we become more distracted.
And I know where that kind of led was like my last, you know, as you have managers, they end up being super busy.
Sure.
It's the nature of the business. It's hard to delineate what's the most important versus what is the, you know, the trivial.
That's a really hard problem.
And I think it's actually shocking to me as I've gotten further along in my career, where when I was young, I was confident and probably wrong.
And in what was important.
And then as I've gotten older, I just, I feel like you end up getting these like superpowers of like that thing's important, that thing's not important.
This thing's politically important. That thing is, you know, makes zero sense, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Like, I think the clarification of that is cleaner.
But it made me, it just made me think about how often I've been in meetings where action items are given and they're given at random in a meeting.
And, and you squirreled on three different topics.
Yeah. And then it almost feels like the one that you don't do or you forget about is the one that gets brought up later. And so it's, it's just really interesting when we're just so busy with so many things coming at us.
And you go through a task and you're like, did I have 10 action items or was there one big one? Like, it's not clear.
Yep. And it's just peanut buttered, right? The common text week to week happens in a one hour meeting, zip around the room, give everybody, give an update.
And then it's like pow, pow, pow. A whole bunch of ideas get spit out. Yeah. We'll know which one belongs to you or what the outcome is.
Yeah. Boy. Yeah.
I hear that. You know, I, our friend Dylan years ago, we were roommates in college back in the last century and the 90s. Yeah. Back in the day.
And he was a history major and I remember him making the comment to the effect that, you know, that it's only the winners the right to history.
And, oh yeah. And what's so true in a corporate environment is that the person that takes notes and distributes them is shaping the history.
Yeah. And so as a self defense mechanism, you walk into those meetings and you're like, nobody asked me to take notes.
And then you walk away and nobody took any notes. Yeah. That's when I started taking notes because I'm very new to you. Right.
And so what I discovered Chris and, and our listeners can borrow this if they want is that if I take the notes, as long as I don't just immediately assign the action items, I can raise my hand at five to 10 minutes before the end of the meeting and say, Hey, I've got some action items.
Can we run those down and I'll send out my meeting notes.
What a great way to unofficially delegate.
Yeah, but the trade off is that I can ask for people to grab them. But what we all are looking for is some leadership and somebody to manage that delegation process you know mine. My approach is very collaborative.
Yeah, all things world it works well. Right. Yep. But, but yeah, we had something that we're asking managed to do but so often it seems like we give them a full time task load as an individual contributor to.
Well, and then like what's hard is like I, you know, like being on the opposite side, you're the manager, right, you're giving stuff down. Like, it takes a lot of cognitive load to figure out all the things that you think or thought, or was supposed to be delegated.
Well, you've, you've managed teams locally and abroad. Yeah, different roles. We have you struck on a way to give them the delegation but also get clear about the accountability that you expect them to have the.
Well, like, like, I wish I really wish that I could be like, oh man, I could do this and that and the other thing. And what I run into is, everyone has their bespoke way of doing things and there's no central repository.
Yeah. And I think that that's the solution but it takes a lot of effort, and it takes it takes basically a discipline and a realization that we're wasting time and wasting people's time and wasting a lot of people's time.
Yeah, I not just simply slowing down and saying, I need you to do this.
Yeah, I, you know, Chris I love that if you're in more than four hours of meetings a day, I mean not just you and I, you listener. Yeah, yeah, you know, it bakes that question of what is all your life energy getting spent on.
Yeah. Right. And is that paycheck and adequate distraction sometimes the workplace feels like detention. I feel like I should be writing this.
Yeah, you're like, I just caught call to the principal's office and I don't know why I'm here, you're like you know why I'm here you're like, my PowerPoint was bad like, just bank me and send me home.
Don't make my mom come pick me up but one of the one of the things that I that that I did listen to a podcast 99% invisible they, they did.
And it was called power broker, which is probably my favorite book of all times. Yeah. But they basically were going through it the entire year and this book is 1000 pages long like it is a tome.
And they were doing interviews with different people and they interviewed this politician this politician said, one of the things that this person had learned in politics was, you can basically only do about six things a year.
And that's really really really helpful for me professionally because, you know, you can't doing more than that.
You're just you're just you're going to burn out, or you're going to get frustrated because you just don't have that many swings at the bat.
And so like I've started thinking about like okay like let's say every two months I can do one thing, right. What does that mean for a week.
And it's like, okay, if I could do one or one or maybe two things that were really productive, like would I like would I be able to get like that kind of that process flow wheel flying the flywheel plane.
Yeah, I think so often we come out of that meeting.
Right. Hey Toby can you look at it's it comes down to even the language. Yeah. Hey, could you look into or.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think you know, I'm not really sure I'm going to go up on but yeah depending on how it's framed.
It's poorly defined. And sometimes a three minute thing is presented the same way as a three year thing.
Yeah. Yeah. You know. So we have for her. What happens when a team or a manager says, we've got a team of five.
What are the things this year. What are the most important 30 things. Yeah, I've.
Yeah, I think it's, I think we're addicted to reacting.
Yeah, I think so too. And so, even everybody right whether it's a manager that you know it's like okay, my boss asked me to do this thing I've got to go do the thing as you should right that's not it that's not a bad thing.
But I think that addiction to reacting.
I would be embarrassed to just think about how much time I waste by reacting and not just slowing down and saying okay.
What am I doing. Yeah. Why is this important. Right, like.
The other thing that's hard is like as you know with direct reports, like there's always going to be this push and pull. And like how much do you trust versus not trust and you know that that's always that's always going to be a balancing game but it's like the truly like slowing down
and being like okay. Is this something we really want to do. I don't think we think about that much in business I think it's, you know, like, even in this, you know, the book, Stolen Focus it said most CEOs have about 28 minutes a day of,
of focus time.
What are they wasting all that time.
I don't have meetings.
You got to have your meetings. One and these are guys, you know, if we if we look at the headlines, where where organizations are paying them 10s of millions of dollars, certainly ones of millions of dollars and organizations right our highest paid people and we give them the least
amount of focus time. Yeah, that's staggering so it's no wonder they're trying to just manage quarter to quarter it's probably all the further they can see in 28 minutes a day.
Yeah, and like how are you tying stuff together how can you go deep in any part of your business if you just have less than a half an hour of focus.
That's incredible. I think, you know, there was a whole series of time management books and philosophies the, you know, the getting things done and then the Pomodoro effect.
Oh yeah, yep. Right or wrong I always picture a tomato.
It's a little bit is not what it is. Yeah. And, but, but that idea of what happens if you block out two hours a day, you know, I, I've tried it I've done it I've enjoyed it at different things.
Yeah, about a 90 minute chunk of flows about all the further I can get but yep. We also have to both ask for it but also push back when you're pushing into it.
Well, and what's funny is like you say that like an hour and a half and I'm like, I get, I almost get like this like this nervous feeling of like, could I could I really do that.
One, get away with it.
And, like, would it would the work that was produced be appreciated. Right, you know what I mean like that's it's just a weird thing and that like, like, where are in all of human history.
Have it hasn't been like, man, I can't do an hour and a half like, I mean, you know, we go back go back 200 years and you're chopping, you're chopping a tree down.
You're like, that took half a day you know like and that was just to get it to fall down you know the thing. Like, these projects would take forever and we're to, you know, today it's like man.
I you know my next meetings and you know I'm back to back to back to back. And by the time you get to that fourth or fifth meeting you're like I don't even know what happened in the other ones.
No, and you're hoping we're hoping for this collective community to support us. And you hope that you just haven't pissed anyone off politically.
You know, the thing I'm taking away from this as we talk about it is whether you have five minutes or an hour and a half or you have a week to chop down a tree. Understanding what the expected accountability is is probably the right question.
Oh yeah, for sure. Somebody throws it, the single best point in time for us to get on top of that is ask, what is it that you're looking for from me. Yeah. And is this something you want me to head up or something you want me to do.
Yeah, scope schedule budget right turn a smart turn and ask into some kind of smart goal. Yep. That's specific and measurable and you have some time bound elements because they know whether or not you can consume it.
Do I need to walk an hour and a half I need to block a year.
Yeah, what's interesting is like, just that simple question. Yeah.
Could. Well that simple question of being like what is what is the size of this that you're asked is, I think would save people and ignore exorbitant amount of time because most of us I think are running around like with that, you know that primal fear in our jobs
right where it's like they could let us go right. And so the boss asked for something. And instantly you think well that's going to take three months because I got to do all things I got to go talk to other people and they're like no, you already did the, you know you go and talk to your
boss your boss is like no you already did the thing. I just need you to share the thing and put the thing over on this thing. Yeah, oh I could do that in 15 minutes.
Right. And it's been four hours freaking out.
Instead you could spend that four hours playing hooky or something right yeah yeah I love deep work you could do deep work.
Deep work. This is a good one we might have to put this behind the paywall. Oh, hell.
What do you think listeners let us know. There you go. Love it. All right, we'll catch up next week. All right. See you next week.