1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Hey, what's up, Toby? We've made it to Processed Ed podcast number 22. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,000 I mean, 26 is half a year. 3 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:13,000 We're closing in. Let's get home. 4 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:20,000 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. 5 00:00:20,000 --> 00:00:21,000 Hundreds. 6 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:22,000 Hundreds. 7 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:29,000 I recently noticed we're surging in the metropolitan area surrounding Dubuque, Iowa. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:32,000 It's, you know, the analytics in this thing. 9 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:34,000 Spectacular. 10 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:39,000 Yeah, I mean, we're not making any money. We've got no sponsors. 11 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:46,000 I will let you know that we did tell Fabletics that they did a poor job. 12 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:51,000 So that sponsorship opportunity is out because they took your offer. 13 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,000 We burned that. 14 00:00:54,000 --> 00:01:00,000 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. 15 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:01,000 That's crazy. 16 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:06,000 That's the term just for the listeners out there, nervous about their children. 17 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:07,000 So, there you go. 18 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:09,000 Hey, what are we talking about today, Chris? Besides... 19 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:15,000 Today's topic is delegation without accountability. 20 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000 Whoa, that never happens. 21 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:24,000 Is this another fictional thing like birthdays and... 22 00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:29,000 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... 23 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,000 I'm ready to Benjamin Buttons, man. Yeah. 24 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:33,000 So, talk to me about... 25 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:37,000 Yeah, what brought this to mind, this idea of delegation without accountability? 26 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:46,000 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. 27 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:58,000 And I know where that kind of led was like my last, you know, as you have managers, they end up being super busy. 28 00:01:58,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Sure. 29 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:05,000 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. 30 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,000 That's a really hard problem. 31 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:15,000 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. 32 00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:18,000 And in what was important. 33 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:27,000 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. 34 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:33,000 This thing's politically important. That thing is, you know, makes zero sense, but I'm going to do it anyway. 35 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:36,000 Like, I think the clarification of that is cleaner. 36 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:51,000 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. 37 00:02:51,000 --> 00:02:56,000 And, and you squirreled on three different topics. 38 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:11,000 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. 39 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:19,000 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. 40 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:29,000 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. 41 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:36,000 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. 42 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:38,000 Yeah. Boy. Yeah. 43 00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:51,000 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. 44 00:03:51,000 --> 00:04:00,000 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. 45 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:10,000 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. 46 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:17,000 Yeah. And so as a self defense mechanism, you walk into those meetings and you're like, nobody asked me to take notes. 47 00:04:17,000 --> 00:04:24,000 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. 48 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:39,000 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. 49 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:43,000 Can we run those down and I'll send out my meeting notes. 50 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:47,000 What a great way to unofficially delegate. 51 00:04:47,000 --> 00:05:02,000 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. 52 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:15,000 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. 53 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:33,000 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. 54 00:05:33,000 --> 00:05:48,000 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. 55 00:05:48,000 --> 00:06:05,000 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. 56 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:20,000 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. 57 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:28,000 Yeah, I not just simply slowing down and saying, I need you to do this. 58 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:43,000 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. 59 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:51,000 Yeah. Right. And is that paycheck and adequate distraction sometimes the workplace feels like detention. I feel like I should be writing this. 60 00:06:51,000 --> 00:07:05,000 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. 61 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:15,000 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. 62 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:27,000 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. 63 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:42,000 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. 64 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:50,000 And that's really really really helpful for me professionally because, you know, you can't doing more than that. 65 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:57,000 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. 66 00:07:57,000 --> 00:08:03,000 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. 67 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:18,000 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. 68 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:22,000 Yeah, I think so often we come out of that meeting. 69 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:30,000 Right. Hey Toby can you look at it's it comes down to even the language. Yeah. Hey, could you look into or. 70 00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:39,000 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. 71 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:46,000 It's poorly defined. And sometimes a three minute thing is presented the same way as a three year thing. 72 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:54,000 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. 73 00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:01,000 What are the things this year. What are the most important 30 things. Yeah, I've. 74 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:05,000 Yeah, I think it's, I think we're addicted to reacting. 75 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:16,000 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. 76 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:20,000 But I think that addiction to reacting. 77 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:30,000 I would be embarrassed to just think about how much time I waste by reacting and not just slowing down and saying okay. 78 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:36,000 What am I doing. Yeah. Why is this important. Right, like. 79 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:51,000 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 80 00:09:51,000 --> 00:10:05,000 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, 81 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:09,000 of focus time. 82 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:12,000 What are they wasting all that time. 83 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:14,000 I don't have meetings. 84 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:31,000 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 85 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:41,000 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. 86 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:50,000 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. 87 00:10:50,000 --> 00:11:04,000 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. 88 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:08,000 Oh yeah, yep. Right or wrong I always picture a tomato. 89 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:22,000 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. 90 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:32,000 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. 91 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:44,000 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. 92 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:48,000 One, get away with it. 93 00:11:48,000 --> 00:12:01,000 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. 94 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:09,000 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. 95 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:20,000 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. 96 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:31,000 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. 97 00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:39,000 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. 98 00:12:39,000 --> 00:12:54,000 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. 99 00:12:54,000 --> 00:13:06,000 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. 100 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:17,000 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. 101 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:20,000 Do I need to walk an hour and a half I need to block a year. 102 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:25,000 Yeah, what's interesting is like, just that simple question. Yeah. 103 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:41,000 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 104 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:55,000 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 105 00:13:55,000 --> 00:14:03,000 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. 106 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:09,000 Right. And it's been four hours freaking out. 107 00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:16,000 Instead you could spend that four hours playing hooky or something right yeah yeah I love deep work you could do deep work. 108 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:22,000 Deep work. This is a good one we might have to put this behind the paywall. Oh, hell. 109 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:40,000 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.