Hey, what's up, Toby? We are to episode 24 of
the Process Debt Podcast. I don't even know where
to go. I mean, we got, well, 24, you know, Elon
is running amok in the government. Oh, wait,
I thought he was fixing things. I don't know.
I'm not sure. What I didn't understand is when
you hire your... your politicians that you just
bought and paid for to promote your product and
your stock goes down, what's that tell you? I
don't understand what that message is for the
market. I don't know, man. But my pay grade,
maybe. He's doing a bang -up job, though, of
really showing how value is created or not to
all of his Tesla shareholders. Yeah, it's very
interesting. very interesting stuff we we should
we we should probably spend a couple to talk
about does because i think i think the the short
term um the the busyness there's a lot of value
for a lot of people yeah um and you know the
impact uh the long -term impact like how does
that how does that play but let's not talk about
that today We should, we should. You're such
a tease, man. You're throwing that for our listeners
in Romania. I know. Shout out to. They're going
to. Now. I know. Next session. Okay. I know they're
not going to listen to us. We're not going to
have anybody in, you know, in Romania. No more
Romanian listeners. It's terrible. I do appreciate
the folks in Grayson, though, that stick it out
with us. There you go. All right. So you had
an idea. Yeah. My topic was people have races,
right? So responsible, accountable. yeah consulted
and informed consulted and informed they have
them but they don't always know what it means
no no your acronym yeah it is a familiar acronym
um and i don't i've seen that people bristle
against it i probably maybe that's because i
bristle that can be yeah you put it you give
out what you want back and yeah it's like i don't
want to be responsible or accountable but the
thought here is like on the software side which
is where I believe most process debt lives. Yeah.
Not because the systems are bad, but because
the people don't understand what those systems
are for. Like, are we stuck with crappy systems?
Yeah. Because we don't have a baseline for what
those systems are supposed to do. Yeah. And I
guess a question, you know, this is not your
first rodeo. I've been a service plumber for
years. What's the worst system that you've stepped
into? I'll tell you, it's also probably one of
the most popular. It's SAP. I've been involved
with a number of, a dozen plus ERP systems. There's
a whole variety, right? SAP and Oracle are probably
the two most common kind of broad base use cases.
But the difficulty with these very complex systems
is that the configuration requirements is so
high. And to do meaningful configuration assumes
you understand how your process works. Oh, yes.
You and I have chatted offline at times about
just they have a core piece of software and it's
like financial software. And then they keep adding
other crap onto it and they acquire other companies
to keep showing. The difficulty is that a client
gets a singular idea in their mind that the three
letter acronym SAP solves everything. You know,
this magical panacea and life will be grand and
greener. Is it like Henry Ford's Model T where
you can get it any color as long as it's black?
Well, there lies the irony, right? I would say
well over half the big ERP systems, one of the
early conversations is always, you know, it's
costly to update when you do more configurations.
There's all this additional testing. The more
you integrate it and really try to make it a
lifeblood system in your business, every step
along the way, there's more care and maintenance.
Again, over half say, we're just going to keep
it vanilla. The reality is, and maybe the title
of this podcast is Nobody Likes Vanilla, but
the reality is that a vanilla -based system It
lacks any of the nuance that so many of our businesses
require. Yeah. You know, a service business and
a product business can use the same software,
but they have to have certain considerations.
What about you? What's the, what's the, you know,
it's, it's interesting. Like I think in my career,
I've actually never worked at a company that
had SAP. Wow. You're not good. I know. I'm getting
better as they would say in Monty Python. I've
worked with a lot of really good software that
has just been hacked so that it's just not usable.
And so I think the Atlassian suite oftentimes
can lend itself to, you know, someone had a bright
idea to add a custom field and, you know, someone
else had a bright idea to add a custom field
and a thousand fields later, you're stuck with.
which which what's the due date i'm scrolling
yeah yeah i i think it's interesting because
i think most people don't realize that that to
add to anything like any single software adding
is so easy and oftentimes it's so wrong and you
can almost never take it away no like if like
if you if you look at our wrists like our you
know if you look at our wrists we have all these
bones on our wrists what are they for we're not
really sure that's right but they were added
they're really hard to take away yeah i'm not
experimenting with that i'll take your word for
that but but you're right it's it does seem like
it's easier to add layers and typically when
process changes we We do our best to offer some
measure of change control, but then we tweak
what's in place. Yep. And there's a whole host
of really good arguments for doing that. Yeah.
To do a wholesale tear out of a process is expensive
and can put your businesses at risk. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, talk to me about there's probably some
elements. Maybe it's not an ugly acronym like
RACI. But there's some elements that. When you
bring this up and thinking about how SOC plays
a role in organizational process, what are some
of those elements that come to mind? Yeah, I
think there's workflow, right? So you've got
Jira Service Management, you've got Zendesk,
you've got reporting, and I delineate between
reporting and analysis. Whereas reporting is
something that's delivered on a regular basis
from a system. It doesn't change. Yeah. Whereas
analysis is single one time and can't be reproduced.
However, within business, that is a nuanced thing
that most people don't understand in that like
an executive asked for something and they get
delivered something that's subpar or semi made
up. But now the executive says, we want you to
reproduce this. And so it gets reproduced, right?
That's right. And then I think there's a prediction
component or prediction slash roadmap, right?
Like how do we do things? And then planning.
And then the last thing that kind of gets lost
is status updates. Like I've been thinking a
lot about like how many tools we use and how
we use them. And it's crazy. Like, we literally
don't realize that probably in a given day, we
probably touched 30 to 40 different tools. Wow.
Like, what's email for? Yeah. Like, it's not,
like, and where this stuff breaks down oftentimes
is you see Excel being your reporting slash analytics
slash workflow slash everything tool because
it's flexible. Yeah. And then you have email
being the planning and notification. And yet,
I don't think email was ever meant for that.
No. In that way, we're kind of like cavemen,
right? We've got a stick and a rock, and we use
them to hunt, and we use it for a pillow, and
it's our toy and entertainment. It's just we
don't have other alternatives. Yeah, you're right.
I personally use email as really kind of my hub
of communications and tracking. Yeah. Yes, it
does have some of those fundamental things like
reminders. But in any given day, I may use email
and provide updates inside of a shared piece
of software. Yep. And use Slack and text and
then all the variety of meeting platforms that
we use now. Well, and one of the things to think
about as you're thinking about process debt is
we are oftentimes being sucked into these like
time suck warps. Meaning if you go into your
email, are you focused? Oh no, it's just a distracting,
distracting area of landmines. Oh, and then you
just got a text on your phone. Why am I playing
Angry Birds now? There's this really weird thing
where it's like, where does the work live? Where's
my process? Where's my workflow? And the thing
is, we just don't talk about it. And so we all
assume that we're right and we're all doing it
differently. And our core tenets of like, is
it discoverable and is it transferable? Right?
We actually don't know, but we believe it is.
And therein lies the problem. Yeah. Yeah. For
a country of less religious folks, we have a
high degree of faith that things will magically
happen. Oh, yeah. You know, and when it comes
to process, we take the handoff from person upstream
and then we give it to the next person downstream
and we walk away and said we did our job. But
that's, you know, that's not a finished thing.
gotten so expert, especially in larger organizations,
that we rarely see a transaction tip to tail.
Yeah, for sure. I don't know that we've talked
on this, but I've been recently doing some work
around real estate renovation for a client. And
this is an opportunity to really see in a very
physical way what happens when those handoffs
break. What happens if you don't get your permits
or inspections or what happens if... The cement
guy shows up and nobody's there to see him and
get stuff poured. Like so many places stuff breaks.
But I think in our digital corporate world, there's
not that same sense of urgency. We don't have
the weather beating on us to keep us focused
and on the timeline. And so things kind of drift,
you know? Yeah. Well, and the other thing is
like the just definition of done oftentimes is
unclean. It's like, you know, where, and I think,
you know, one of the things that we've talked
about is like, what are you doing? Are you just
drafting something up? Then just do a crappy
video. And then we'll figure out if it's important
later. Yeah. Well, I think on this notion of
is there a race for software, where should the
technology be the system of record? Oh, yeah,
for sure. That's that kind of accountable piece.
Where is it consulted? And so oftentimes... We
put process into technology, but then when we
build out the access model, we strip out people
that need to consult the very data we capture.
And so now we've artificially separated them
and made their lives harder. But then the informed
piece, too, back to reporting and analytics,
they are not the same. Oh, it's interesting.
I think it would be very interesting. it would
you know not that you could do this but like
if every single report you just simply had a
stamp of this is a one -time analysis or this
is repeatable yeah and what you would find i
think what you would find is you would find that
most processes are driven from a report down
then versus a process up yeah You're talking
hierarchically in the organization. Yeah. Something's
missing in a report and therefore we need to
add this thing to the report. Yeah. And so then
we manufacture that into our process. And the
process is really good until they ignore the
report. But the report lives on for decades.
Yeah. And then. But that process either stops,
there's entropy, or you get a who's on first
type thing where it's like, I don't know who's
doing the report. It just magically shows up
in the spreadsheet. And they realize that that
data is stale from, you know, 94 or something
like that. Chris, we're coming up on the end
of time. And so one of my favorite memes going
around right now is a guy's girlfriend is losing
her mind. And he comes to him and says, hey,
I can't keep up with all the laundry. You know,
the house is a mess. He's like, oh, wait, come
here. Let me show you. He walks her into the
laundry room. He says, I just dumped my dirty
laundry in this basket. And a day later, it shows
up in my dresser and it's clean and folded. And
you can see her like starting to boil. And he's
like, come into the kitchen. I leave my crap
all over. But when I walk away, it gets cleaned
up and it's back in the cupboards. And I think
that people kind of expect process to work like
that. You know, if I ignore it long enough, somebody
else will magically, the fairies will come in
and they'll fix it. You know, they'll put things
back in the proper places. So, yes. And the closer
you get to the root of whatever it is, it's just
nuanced. solely wants and like it takes so much
like i like it takes so much of that slow thinking
of like why do we want this how do we use this
right which is why like anytime anytime someone
asked me about a report i'm like or creating
specifically a new report like i had someone
asked me today i was like they were like hey
i need to create this report and i was like do
it as simple and as easy as you can And if it
gets used, they will tell you if you want more
information. Yeah. And then you will find that
the information that you're providing is not
that good. And so you're going to have to clean
it up. But the reality is, is they're probably
not going to want to clean it up. And so it's
significantly easier to ask for more and more
reports and more metrics that you don't have
to think about. And so in some ways it becomes
this easy out for management. Yeah. It's really
like there's nothing more frustrating, and I
like data, but there's nothing more frustrating
than just grinding and being asked to deliver
data, delivering data, and have it be dismissed
because the data doesn't match the confirmation
bias that they want. Yeah, that must be wrong
because that's not what I thought. There you
go. You know what? I think on our 24th session,
we may have just created the longest. Oh, love
it. Yeah. This podcast also not brought to you
by the assholes at Fabletics. That's correct.
We do not like them. They're not our favorite.
All right, dude, we will catch you, catch you
next week, man. It's a deal. All right. Thanks.