Hey, what's up, Toby? Hey, buddy. How you doing,
man? We made it through a half a year. Happy
year. Welcome to spring. I know. We did it. What's
funny is I did one by myself, and that was hard.
I got a whole new respect for people that do
podcasts by themselves. Oh, brother. It was nutty.
I so appreciate. Having fun and doing these silly
things with you and silly and serious, but it's
a lot easier to trade witticisms with somebody
across the table, you know? Heck yeah. No. What
have you been thinking about? You, I love to
serve some things. Yeah, I have a topic for today.
The topic for today that I would like to talk
about, and I don't even know why this one came
up, but I was thinking about those like military.
human exoskeletons well sure like we do right
yeah yeah i mean like like i mean were you lifting
something heavy or what was going on maybe maybe
it's because i'm i'm older and my hip hurts i'm
like maybe i need maybe fair okay maybe i need
to go and rent one of those uh and i don't Well,
what I was trying to think about there was specifically
around, like, structures that seem like they
would actually be very helpful. Yeah. Or look
like they assist. And it also feels like every
time those little exoskeleton things happen,
and maybe it was an infomercial. I don't know
what I was thinking about this. But you're always
kind of like, oh, man, that looks cool. But then,
like, they never work. yeah no like like we want
we want them to work like uh avatar right or
like alien where they just flawlessly pivot it's
almost like they understand what you're gonna
do yeah yeah i i've never experienced anything
that works remotely like that yeah well and then
the other funny thing is like they're always
marketed as like military grade and they'll help
people and you're like These dudes are, like,
the strongest, like, badasses out there. And
you're, like, you're going to give them an exoskeleton
to slow them down? Yeah. A little bit encumbered.
Like, maybe just go old school and use your body.
But anyway, so the thought here is just really
around, from a process standpoint, I think a
lot of businesses build up these exoskeletons
around tooling. Oh, dude. Right? Yeah. And so
our daily work is this exoskeleton clunky thing
where we've got to put a piece of our day. It's
almost always the trifecta of some ERP or some
sort of system like that. A ticketing system.
Yeah. A PowerPoint deck. excel and uh pick 12
other tools right yeah well and some of the clunkiness
today is it's different than when you and i first
entered the workforce in the 90s right because
we have a factor authentication everything is
in the cloud we're working remotely whether it's
from home or somewhere else so there's all these
additional layers and then the the Malcontents,
you know, those maliciously oriented, fierce
-agended monsters are out there figuring out,
how do I crawl into all of their stuff that I'm
not supposed to be in? Oh, yeah. And so even
if the software has been tuned after decades,
there's all these extra layers of exoskeleton
that have nothing to do with the motion we're
trying to accomplish. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dude, I
love this. It totally is. It's almost like if
a reptile never shed its skin. It was just dragging
along years of dead skin. Why do you have that?
We're not sure. Henry over there, he just won't
shed his skin. He just wants to hold on to things.
Henry is so selfish, hanging on to all that dead
skin. Henry, Henry. That's an example of why
do we do this report? Yeah. TPS reports, baby.
What do you do here? You know, you raise a really
interesting point, too. And I want to go back
to what you said about, you know, we talk about
military grade, which generally means that we're
talking about physical tasks that are being performed
by generally younger people. at or near their
peak physical condition. So they've already been
tuned and optimally aligned. Let's mean a benefit
of the doubt. We always know exceptions. We all
saw stripes. Bill Murray's not dealt the course
of one kind of specimen, but he's funny. But
here we have people that are tuned for the work
at hand, but then what we're trying to do is
promote a better way of getting more out of them.
Talk to me about how you see that in the workplace.
Cause I'm hearing that in this process. No, what's
interesting is like, I think, you know, developers
happen to be, you know, they're, they're one
of the highly highest paid like careers. Yeah.
And I think it's because they are forced to build
stuff that's repeatable. And I, you know, sometimes
like they, they also. What's interesting about
developers is oftentimes they have the ability
to just basically ignore things like they're
one of the few like one of the few careers where
they can put on blinders. Yeah. And it's kind
of OK if they're respected by their peers. Yeah.
But you go into you go into other like you go
into a marketing like or creative stuff like
it like a lot of that work is just reactionary
or can be at least. Right. And then the management
layer, like the exoskeleton reporting management
layer that people put on, that has just always
been fascinating to me. Because the report's
never good enough, and so it's always changing.
And oftentimes the process doesn't fully support
the report, so the report... you know, has to
be altered or changed or whatever in order to
meet a need. And then the process stops, but
the report continues, just keeps going. It's
like the Energizer bunny. The thought that crosses
my mind as you start to talk about management
reports and the inadequacies there and the exoskeleton
of reporting up to leadership. It makes me think
that the optimally tuned organism that is the
organization has maybe outgrown and it's not
figured out how to shed its skin. I don't know
that organizations at thousands of people are
really an optimal organism. I think it's something
that's done for economies of scale. It's done
for a myriad of reasons, but I think that we're
still very tribal. Our optimal working teams
are probably that tribal range. You know, I think
that I think the approximate number and that
the number of relationships, healthy relationships
where we can see one another's worth and identify
boundaries and how we work together, that number
really maxes out at something like 60. Yeah.
And so we talk about departments, you know, maybe
at that size. And then we have managers inside
of departments. But I don't think. I don't think
that organizations were ever intended to report
up for thousands of people across multiple time
zones, multiple continents. And therefore it's
inherently broken, perhaps. It's just bad exoskeleton.
Yeah. Well, and I think what's hard is like,
because the larger you get, the more control
you have to have. Right. Or perceived control.
Yeah. And so you have to report on that somehow.
And the other thought that I had, you know, recently
was like, does reporting structure or business
reports limit innovation? And, you know, cause
I, I've, I, I was, I was talking to a friend
cause I did a, I was, I did some Salesforce work.
Yeah. Three or four years ago. Okay. And one
of the things that we wanted to change is we
want to actually make the system better, but
because of one of our measurements, I couldn't
actually make a change because it was going to
make the manual response time go from less than
two days to two seconds because we were automating
it. And we were automating it for a very specific
purpose, which was any time in these ticketing
systems when you send an email, it captures that
email and it basically links all those emails
together. What was happening was with the Salesforce
implementation, they would send it to the client
but it would be before hours and then we'd get
a reply and then all of a sudden they'd have
12 tickets oh and so we had to fight very hard
to do the auto response piece because it would
have hit you know your two day your two day or
12 hour whatever response time down to two seconds
and then it just basically killed their metric
and you're like no no i'm solving a real problem
over here but but there was this exoskeleton
of something that had to be met that really was
met because of when when we started it we just
didn't know yeah and the the innovation was in
make adding an automation to help reduce reduce
duplicate tickets because there was a ton of
them and it was it was like this internal battle
of like well that's going to change the report
you're like ding ding ding on the nose you're
you're right it sure will Well, our clients won't
like that. Okay. Then, then so we, we literally,
the, the, the, the one thing that we had to do
is we had to make it a toggleable so you could
turn it on or off per client. Right. Which was
hilarious. Yeah. Let's add in light. You know,
what's, what's funny, Chris, is that, um, I think
in your example of, of there's a clear reason
why timeliness matters. And then there's certain
information that can and cannot be communicated
as timely as people want. And you and I have
lamented over the years about some of the gyrations
we've gone through in our careers. And I remember
doing a lot of one -off analysis. We've talked
about this. And then they go, great, now make
that persistent. Because it's something that
was never created. Conversely, we're asked to
build persistent things. But the need isn't well
understood. And so, you know, I might have Ripley,
awesome alien exoskeleton. But if my job is peeling
grapes, I'm still screwed. It could be the absolute
best tool in the world. But if we don't understand
the purpose, then it's a misfit. Yeah, I have
a friend. I have a friend that said this and
I'm going to steal it from him. But he said there's
nothing more. more permanent than a temporary
fix like yeah there's just i mean and and so
many of those things happen and i don't know
i don't necessarily even know that there's a
there's a problem like that you can it's something
that you can fix i just think i do think that
man i i guess i guess fundamentally it comes
down to this management's management's number
one task is to unblock its people And there is
this exoskeleton. I don't think people get that.
Yeah, well, I think management's number one role
is to unblock people. Thank you. I appreciate
you saying it again from the deep seats because
I think that is a huge, huge statement for us.
Yeah, well, I think if you can unblock people,
you have the people that are the boots on the
ground doing the work. Yeah. You're going to
get phenomenal ideas. Yeah. And you're going
to you're going to, you know, but I don't it's
a hard that that in and of itself is a hard problem
because they've got they've got things that they've
got to answer to. But if you can unblock people
and go to the go to the shop floor and figure
out, hey, what are these people doing or what
are their ideas on making it better? You might
actually get some really good stuff. Well, and
dear Lord, you might also get people invested
in your mission. You might get people engaged.
in the work because they're seeing their insight
manifest into new directions. Yeah. Exoskeletons.
Exoskeletons, man. Yeah. And it's... Shellfish
and broken make -believe. Well, you know, actually
shellfish are a great example. Right. Animals
in the wild that create and live inside of their
skeleton instead of having all their skin suit
wrapped around it. But it's super purposeful.
I mean, and that's been a long and slow evolution.
We're just horribly impatient. Well, if you also
look at the exoskeleton animals like mollusks
and like they they're not rapidly moving. Right.
Like, and they're, they're, they're, they're
localized. Like, you know, no one, no one says,
you know what, when I think of strategy, I think
of shellfish. I think, I think from a seasonal
standpoint, like, I think companies have to.
have to play that strategy. And, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that like, yeah, it has to be
intentional. And I guess, I guess that's the
whole, that's the process that conversation here,
which, which really comes down to like, you have
to be intentional. Like, and we've talked about
this, I don't know, probably 10 episodes. Like
that isn't always bad, but it is if you don't
know what you're doing with it. oh yeah oh so
brutal no correct it it's not it's not a it's
not a mortgage on a house right it's it's it's
it's uh it's something that i did and i couldn't
i i wanted to shortcut the system in order to
do a thing If someone's going to have to pay
the piper or someone's going to have to be the
fall guy, that's how it works. Well, we did it
again. We talked about exoskeletons. It's good
stuff, man. Let's keep it rocking. I know. There
you go. All right, man. All right. All right.
Thanks, man. We'll see you next week. Bye.