Hey, what's up, Toby? We are to process debt
podcast number 27. We're past the halfway home.
I know we made it a half a year. I made it a
half a year. All right, today's topic. Congratulations.
Today's topic. Okay, go ahead. I know hold on
i'm trying to i'm trying to find the good words
here. So it is Processed that oftentimes hides
in areas that people can't see okay And they
name it something or they give the the fixing
of that Problem a name and by giving it a name.
It's gone like that that that problem now disappears
from focus because that name has to like kind
of uh, the happen. So like, think of a reorg.
Okay. Yep. Okay. So, yeah, reorgs are really
interesting right now. And how often in your
career have you seen a reorg and then the next
reorg is back to the org? With only 85 % of the
staff. Yeah. Now we're going back to what we
did with Tom, Dick, and Harry who understood
how we used to do it. I've seen, I've seen that
those patterns happen a lot. Well, you've been
doing process work. We talk a lot about this,
you know, between the two of us, like half a
century now of process. And yeah, oftentimes
we take action. And what we're really doing is
focusing on a symptom, but that's all they can
see. At an executive level, they're only seeing
a little bit of the business process and it's
usually whatever plinks out the back end, you
know, pooping jelly beans. Well, what's funny
is it's oftentimes we need to do something. And
it's not really out of, the change isn't out
of understanding. It's out of discomfort. That's
pretty human, right? Oh yeah. Why wouldn't, why
wouldn't we do that? Right? Like we're, we're,
we're sitting on a Savannah and we're uncomfortable
because we're getting sunburned. Let's go move
under the tree. I'm sitting on a six inch cause
Stan's a wallet. I need a new, I need a new chair.
My hip. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Humans recognize
discomfort. We're just not very smart about identifying
the root cause. And so we attack them. Totally.
Yeah. Correct. Because it's easier to move, to
move the emotion, right? To remove the emotion
through movement, whatever that movement is,
than to sit in the discomfort and say, what is
actually going on? Yeah. I'm trying to think
of what podcast I was listening to. It was, I
think it was Brene Brown and a huge fan. And
you know, one of the, one of the conversations
had to do with, so you get a thorn in your foot
and you know, it's going to hurt to have to pull
it out. So now you find a way to put your sock
on without snagging the thorn and you cut up
your sock. And all of a sudden you've designed
a custom sock for people that happen to have
a thorn in that exact same place. Audience of
one. But your shoe doesn't fit. So now you start
re -engineering shoes that accommodate the thorn.
And you see where this goes. Like the lucency
is outrageous, but it's exactly what we do. It's
nature, but it's manifest when we put your humans
together and call it a company. Yep. Right. So
Bob's an asshole, but we figured out a way to
work around Bob, even though he's the center
of everything and it's painful, but won't have
to involve him. For sure. There's a law that
I always mention, but for some reason I'm forgetting
it, but basically it says that something will
be around, there's a 50 % chance that something
will be around for as long as it's been around.
Oh, that's a horrible law. That makes me really
think about my belly. Tell me more. For example,
For example, IBM has been around for a hundred
plus years. And so in some shape or form, there's
a 50 % chance that IBM will be around in another
hundred years. In some shape or form, right?
Look at Nokia. It started out as, it's not a
phone company that we all remember. It started
out as like a woolen mill or something. Like
Fiskars, Fiskars scissors. They've been around
for two or 300 years, something, something very,
very long. They're going to be around for a really
long time. Right. You know, I thought they were
damp and then I heard, I think it was Microsoft
that acquired them about five years ago. AOL
is still a thing. Right. And so, so like, this
is the interesting thing about startups, right.
It's like, they've been around for two years.
There's a 50 % chance that they'll be around
for another years. But the reason I bring this
up is because oftentimes orgs are around human
moving parts. Yes. Right. They're not around
the internal tools or applications or business
units that have been there for a long time. It's
around personalities. Yeah. It's around personalities.
It's around, let's shake things up and let's
change our org structure to match something different.
And you're like, I mean, That's why most of them
that reorg around a concept just die in six months.
I will say too, I don't know how many times I've
seen a newly promoted manager or director or
an executive come in from outside that says,
here's how we used to do it. I want to put my
mark on this. Organizations don't value consistent,
steady, predictable. You lose sight of the fact
that not every part of the business needs to
be wildly innovative. For years I've said to
clients, what are the boring parts of your business
that have to be consistent? And their answer
is, our business is wild and exciting. We do
cold storage and you move pallets in and out
of giant refrigerators. And I'm like, ooh, yes,
that is sexy. You say so, chief. Isn't it sexy
doing the billing and payroll too? And I love
that you call that out because not every part
of our business needs to be ever innovative.
Like where we're the same as our competitors,
that's where we should be cooperating and seeking
best practices. If we can drive efficiencies
in how we bill each other, fantastic. But where
we compete in the marketplace is where we should
be innovating. How we serve our customers uniquely
is how we really sharpening our saw. And yet
we confuse all of that. You know, we don't celebrate
zero errors in payroll. I'm glad that's not my
job, you know. Oh gosh. Oh yeah. I love to pick
on what we have several friends in common that
are deep in that world. And I'm like, God bless
you. because I don't care about anything behind
the comma and you guys are worried about fractions
of pennies. Well, there's different mindsets
at play here. Well, and it is really crazy, right?
So if you think of like, and you've done change
management forever, right? And getting people
to change and getting them to figure out how
do you change and how do you go through that
discomfort of learning something new? Like it's
not a matter of It's, it's not a matter of gen
AI will solve the problem. Yeah. What is Chris's
new mailing address for his pay stub? That's
gen AI. It'll figure it out. Like I've got a,
I've got a really good friend that's doing a
lot of really cool gen AI work, right? And he
has found that people come to him and he is a
huge lever. in which they will come to him with
a problem and he's like, that's not a gen AI
problem. That's called a software problem. You
should just throw some developers at it and fix
it. And so it's been really funny because he's
like, we're solving software problems. They're
getting discovered by executives because that's
where the focus is. That's where the spotlight
effect is. And so you bring gen AI around and
it's this big spotlight. And my buddy's like,
yeah, that has nothing to do with LLMs or machine
learning or nothing. And then it exposes the
problem of like, well, what's going on? And he
explains it. He's like, well, we're going to
make it better by exposing this to clients or
whatever they're doing. But the problem was not
fundamentally even close to an LLM, but it allowed
the focus to be on the problem. And he skillfully
said, it's a software thing. I would say, and
we've talked about this, there is the idea of,
what do we solve with tools? What do we solve
with process? What do we solve with human understanding?
But then what has to be solved with vision? What
you're describing is one of those, they're starting
at the most technical solution. Right. I think
the easiest version is, are we clear on the vision?
You know, we want super innovative payroll practice
or do we want payroll cut on time and accurate?
And if the team is pressing it in Excel and we're
not blowing it a hundred percent a year, let
them do what they're doing. There's no subscription
cost in the world that is better than the competent
Excel guy that nails the payroll process or whatever.
It's not, everything gets more expensive from
there. And if we don't have that clarity and
then we move on to the people is that there's
an understanding gap there. Tools and gen AI
doesn't solve somebody, you know, hiring Toby
to run payroll. That's just a bad idea. Right.
He's not wired for it. He doesn't care about
it. Get the guy out of there. But we go directly
to the most complex end because it is sexy. Our
executives saw a Harvard Business Review at the
airport and it had big in the eye on the cover.
They didn't read it. They didn't buy it. You
know, they read the cover. Well, but what's also
interesting is it's like when, when these, I
mean, we were around for the dot com bubble and
it's one of those funny things where there's
such a shift in attention. Oh my God. You can't
go wrong spending money there. Yeah, it's true.
And you will go wrong eventually because you've
got to pay payroll. Right. It's like gravity.
Yeah, yeah. Like it's the finance, it's the business
and the problems that people are willing to pay
to have solved. is where the rubber hits the
road. Yeah. It's funny that you bring up the
.com because it's very germane to today's mania
around AI. And I was working in healthcare, you
know, 97 to 99, and I was doing IT strategy and
the interim CIO said, what we really need is
a physician portal with a web interface. 99,
everybody had... button only Nokia phones with
little antenna that came out the top or flip
phone. You're super cool, right? And most of
these doctors are still packing pagers because
it won't be able to call, right? And so here
we have guys looking at a green screen that's
installed in the wall by where they're doing
their notes after procedures. If they would have
had a web interface, they wouldn't have been
able to use it. Like they didn't have these guys
carrying laptops. And so I feel like we're in
this same place. First it was, let's put web
interfaces and then it's like move everything
to the cloud, which ironically was when all the
laptops and PCs were the opposite of, we were
trying to get everything off of a mainframe and
then we'd re -consolidate. And so now we have
Jane AI, which is the latest exciting, not just
Jen, but all the AI craze. And time and time
again, what we find is in to your point, like
it's a beautiful bandaid, but it may not be you
know, maybe need a tourniquet, you know? Yeah.
And what, well, the interesting thing is it's
like, look, like life gets busy, you get stressful.
Yeah. And we don't go to a place when we're in
stress, we don't go to a place of, let's think
deep here. A hundred percent. It's not our, it's
not our natural tendencies. Right. And so, and
I don't know even know how you would track this,
but my guess is, is if you find really funky
mistakes where businesses have like, kind of
shifted wrong or done something. Like, I just
wonder if it's just this whiplashy. I have to
make a decision because I'm being sunburned in
the Savannah. I have to make a decision to go
under the tree or go run somewhere, right? Like
I just have to, I have to, I have to do something
to alleviate the stress. Sales organizations
and sales comp is a perfect example of, you know,
We're not, we're not getting the outcome we thought
we were going to get. So how do we move quickly
instead of asking why are we getting the outcome?
Maybe we have a shitty sales force, but instead
we call a plan. You know, that's the moving target
marketing shifts the focus all the time. There's
not a persistent strategy. It's like, we've got
700 options. Clearly we chose the wrong one.
So yes, I love this naming it alone. Doesn't
solve the problem. You know, the lizard brain
is fight, flight or freeze. And so we want to
take action. This is how we correct. That's correct.
And instead, instead it's, it's just that simple
slowing down, take a breath. Like what's the
real problem. You know, it's that slowest, you
know, it's, it's all the smoother, the smoothest
fast. It's, it's, it's a, I do have a, I have
a little thing in my backpack that says that.
Cause I do think that that's really brilliant.
You're right. Like and I you know, just really
quick like my wife and I have gotten into this
like military Military where they send the celebrities
and they go through basically like a seal. Okay
a seal well seal selection. This is like anything
Yeah, it's it's fun and it's enjoyable and you
push these people to their mental limits and
they crashed and they hate each other and they
cry and all You know, it's it's good drama. But
what's what's interesting about what's interesting
about that is like We as Americans think that
the army is all about this selection process.
And the reality is, that's all that is in the
military. Like that whole, you know, the Coronado
Island with the Navy SEALs, where you ring the
bell, that's selection. That's not execution.
And it's two completely different things. And
so like, even when, even when like our troops
have like trained with, you know, Ukrainian troops.
Like it's such a different culture and that like,
we're very like the, like our army is very much
about learning, growing, getting better. Right.
It's not about hiding the truth. It's about exposing
what went wrong. Right. And so, you know, I,
and, you know, sure. It's not always that way.
You know, the army is big enough to have, you
know, some screw ups in it, but if you think
about that, like, I think sometimes we think
business is like the selection process. And it
is if you're a startup, right? Yes. But if you're
pulling in tens of millions or hundreds of millions,
you've already been selected. And so the game's
different. When so? Anyway, we made it again.
Look at that. Just a shmidge over the five minute
mark as usual. I hope you've all taken a second
lap around the business building on your way
into work today. Love it. Thanks for joining
us as always. Chris, this is... Good stuff, brother.
Thank you. Cool man. We'll catch you next week.
It's a deal. Have a great week.