Well, hello, Toby. It's another week of the process.
How are you? I'm good, buddy. How are you doing?
Good. We were on the road last week, so we're
back. Today's topic, you're kicking it off. I'm
kicking it off. What's the topic? I probably
sound like I was enjoying time away from the
office, and I was. Nice. I was also dealing with
something that comes for all of us eventually,
and it's a little bit of joint pain. I had a
case of old man knee. And now bear with me here,
because I think we'll bring it around for our
listeners who may be asking, I don't care how
old these guys are. Well, you know, it's it's
really great. I don't know about you, but we
had the fourth of July holiday. I'd actually
taken some personal day before the fourth just
to clear my head and really enjoy the weekend.
And then a week enrolled into vacation, which
was fantastic. Yep. When I'm on vacation. I want
to go as hard as I did in my 30s. And strangely,
in my mid -50s, my mind and heart might be willing,
but my body don't play ball the same way, right?
And so just around the fourth, I remember waking
up and trying to move, and God, my knee was so
stiff. And I'm fortunate that I don't experience
a lot of arthritis. Playing hard with the kids
or trying to keep up with the young people or,
you know, dancing at a wedding. I feel things
differently, but in general, I take pretty good
care of myself. Yep. Oh my God, Chris, my knee
was killing me and it hurt beneath the, uh, it
hurt beneath my knee cap and it hurt at the back
of my knee. Yep. And it was so stiff when I wasn't
moving and I'd get up to walk on it and I immediately
thought, Oh my God. I didn't think like, is it
a strain? I thought. It's a blood clot. I got
a blood bite. It's the African whatever spider
and it sucked my heart out. So I immediately
think, oh my God, I've got a blood clot. It's
hit my knee. Is it going to go to the heart of
my brain? Everything's over. It's a good life
and I'm done. Are we changing our podcast to
the two old guys get old podcast? Bring it back.
That's right. Old man ailments. But, you know,
as I reflected on it and I walked it out, I didn't
immediately go, who do I know that can tell me
what's really going on? It's like, you know what?
I'll work it out. And then I keep hobbling around
on it. It would get better. And then I would
sit for a prolonged period of time. We were on
the road last week. And so I had a long section
to drive and I got out of my truck and I thought,
oh my Lord, I wanted this thing amputated. It's
hurting. Yeah. Well, so finally, I'm like, I
need to get into the PT, somebody that can actually
feel the, the joint. And she said, uh, you've
overblown it. It's not a blood clot. So for a
week and a half, I'm thinking it's the worst.
And then she goes to like, well, and the other
good news is your meniscus is fine, but what
you do was you probably move too fast. You've,
you know, you've tightened up your quad and your
hamstring and it's like, And so a lot of this
pain is something that you could have stretched
your way out of, Chief. And I'm sitting there
kind of going, how much agony and heartache was
I trying to ignore, making the most of my short,
short life before that blood clot hit that didn't
exist. Right. And so here's where we bring it
back to our Processed Dead podcast. We have an
old man whining and complaining. In spirit of
our podcast, one of the things I was thinking
about is How many times do leaders or process
owners experience a symptom that they didn't
expect? And then how quickly do we go to the
worst possible scenario? Yeah. And we're like,
oh my God, how much can we get done in light
of this thing getting ready to completely blow
up? Yeah. Instead of reaching out to the expert.
You know, there's somebody that has the special,
highly specialized training, especially in mature
organizations that have a fine process. They're
in the belly of it, right? What's funny, what
that makes me think of is the whole, you know,
I'm thinking about processes, right? The podcast.
And I just think what's interesting is as processes
get old, right? As we get old, we get more brittle,
right? Which is unfortunate, but it's, you know,
something we all have to go through. Totally.
And to your point, as stuff gets brittle, right?
Like stuff starts to show up, right? The older
car, when it starts to hit 150 ,000 miles, like
stuff starts to happen, right? And you also get
overly anxious and there's a mechanic or a physical
therapist or whatever that can help us out. Yeah.
I think too, and we've talked a lot about our
early career experience. Early on, we were fascinated
with the mechanics of the process. Yeah. And
we wanted to monitor each of those mechanics.
Like that was a source of passion. And then over
time, we get a bigger view of how an organization
works. Yeah. And that mechanics of a specific
process become less critical. Yeah. And so I've
had this knee since I was born. I never became
expert at how the knee joint functions. And well,
but I never would call right. Got me in within
24 hours to say, Hey buddy, don't sweat it. And
so. organizationally, your point that you just
touched on about maintenance, I think is such
a good one. We may still be in the process that
we started our career with, especially if you've
been with a company, you know, three, five, 10
years, you've been very expert part of it, but
the organization is shifting. And that process
may be getting stretched, you know, or maybe
it's not getting stretched enough and becomes
- Or it's not even needed anymore. Yeah, right.
So unlike a knee, you know, business - Unlike
a knee. It can evolve too. So maybe liver would
have been a better medical example. Setting that
aside, you know. That's funny. It also makes
me think of like, how our body, when our bodies
break down. Yeah. Right? Like a compound fracture
or a broken bone. Yeah. Is actually better, I
think also for businesses, than it is a soft
tissue injury. Oh boy. Yeah. Right? Like you
tear an ACL and you don't have a surgeon. And
you're basically living in the 1800s. Hello,
Kane. Oh, that's it. You're done. Yeah. And if
you take this back to the business side, what's
interesting is we think the strains and pains
are compound fractures and they're not. Right.
It's a bunch of tissue. Yeah. Correct. Correct.
Right? And it's like, no, no, no, no. If it gets
really bad, you're going to know. You're going
to know. You would swarm it. You would solve
the problem. Everybody would come out of the
woodwork. And instead, some of these things,
they're just nagging. They're nagging injuries
or nagging processes or nagging whatever. And
a lot of times we don't do anything about it.
We don't. Chris, we complain. I would love to
say that I just don't complain. Just make a bold
face lie. Who me? Complain? What? Okay, random
question. Completely off track. But if Instagram
didn't have funny memes, would you go on it?
Probably not. Funny memes and then guys telling
me what I should be doing for my health as I
go. Yes, that's true I should be doing that and
What else should I think I knew that but I should
be doing that and then I just yeah You're right.
I'm somewhat Completely off -topic and we'll
bring it back but completely off -topic. I'm
somewhat below I somewhat believe that our algorithms
Make us unhappy like they're in the we we we
as the engineers of our algorithms that we don't
know that we're in, make ourselves unhappy by
clicking on things that make us unhappy. Yeah,
we're our own worst enemies, aren't we? Yeah,
yeah. And then we're upset all day because we
click. For me, it's I clicked on that productivity
thing. And it's like, oh, god, I'm just not productive.
And you're like, oh, my god, maybe I should just
do the work. All right, anyway, back to you.
Back to your injury, right? Yeah. Well, and I
think you touched on the point of it and it's
like, what is the maintenance? You know, and
when we were, when we were teenagers and playing
sports, we were told to stretch and we were also
damn flexible. It seemed silly. Yeah. Right.
And then for those that continue to perform and
compete at a higher level, stretching became
increasingly important because that was the only
way to maximize. But when we start to talk about
process, we have that same kind of required maintenance
routine, but we don't always prioritize the maintenance
piece. If we're getting the right outputs, you
know, the input and then we get the output, we
don't think about what's taking place in the
middle until it's a compound fracture, until
it completely breaks. Well, the other thing that's
interesting about the body, right, is we're so...
our bodies are so able to be adjustable, right?
Like many businesses, really. Yeah, right. Right.
You could have injured this 10 years ago. Oh
my gosh. Right? And never even known it. And
your body just kind of worked around it. You
were sore one morning and the next day you were
fine. And then you did something today and all
of a sudden, or whatever, or over the weekend,
and now you're like... Like, like, and I think
that... I think that that maintenance when it
comes to businesses and processes and asking
why we do things and actually listening to the
response, like, I, I slowed down here because
I'm just thinking about different social cues
that we follow in business. that actually don't
help process. What I mean by that is like, what
I mean by that is like going back to Instagram
and health, right? It's, you know, I'm gonna
do this later, or is this really helpful? And
a lot of times, the real response that we should
give, If we're psychologically safe, it would
be, that's not helpful. I got nothing out of
that. And the answer comes by and says, how are
things going today? And you're like, hey, everything's
good. What you're saying is, I feel good. And
sometimes what you need to be doing is saying,
hang on a second, what I'm doing isn't working.
So that some of that social interaction too smothers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like that injury,
right? It's not a big deal at first. Right, but
it's the second it's the second injury or that's
the injury that that's caused by you getting
out of kilter Right, so you hurt your knee and
all of a sudden it's your ankle hurts, right?
Like this happens in businesses, right? So like
you hand off a report you hand that up you hand
that off upstream and The upstream people don't
ever use it or they're reading it wrong or whatever
Like it just it's really interesting like to
be honest at the beginning of this I was like
I don't know how we're going to get anywhere
unprocessed at because we're just going to be
two old guys complaining while our knee is. So
that's fine. We'll see what happens. Well, Chris,
we've done worse broadcasts. We have. I will
say, you know, to kind of tie it back, when I
think about what process maintenance and debt
management looks like, you know, I would say,
and I'm thinking about some of so much of the
work I did around Sarbanes -Oxley, you know,
now a lot of that focus was 15 years ago, but
When it came to the financial processes, we were
actively measuring every month. What does our
throughput look like? How long does it take to
perform a transaction? How many transactions
have to get cleaned up? And so there was dimensions
of duration and is our duration for a process
cycle still the same? We were looking at the
quality of the transactions moving through. So
it doesn't have to be overblown. It's not like
we have to rigorously scrub our process every
day, but Even on a quarterly basis, if we take
a moment to really ask, is the throughput happening?
Are people getting internal or external customers?
Are they getting what they need in a timely fashion?
Those are indicators of process health. Not necessarily
knee health, but process health. And that's really
what tells us if we're accumulating debt. Well,
one of my big PUs in the business world is an
ever -changing, consistent deliverable. Yes.
Right. Whether that's a QBR or monthly something
or other or whatever. Like I, and I get, I get
the desire for executives to improve those, improve
them, make them look better. But oftentimes the
better is more pretty and more pretty isn't necessarily
better. Right. Like more More pretty hides a
lot of sins. Yeah. We've talked about that before,
right? A one -off thing that's done really beautifully
is expect to become a daily report and it's an
impossible task. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just,
it just doesn't work. I think that's a form over
function kind of thing, right? And focused on
functional health. With our bodies in process,
we're going to be happier in the long term. Right.
Next topic, rehab or replacement? No. First of
all, I don't think you're going to get your knee
replaced yet, but the reason why I bring that
up is what I've seen consistently through my
career is that processes get so bad. That it
requires a replacement. And it's in the act of
replacing where the impact is. It's not necessarily
in the act of what the replacement is. Meaning
processes run amok and they're so bad or something
doesn't work. Then you come in with an SAP or
another different piece of software. That comes
in, you have to undo all your bad processes,
hear a bunch of complaining, stand up a bunch
of spreadsheets where the software doesn't work.
But generally, I've not seen an implementation
that has been fully funded and where executives
are behind it. that hasn't had a decent impact.
Now, whether it's the right solution or not,
or whether they spent the right amount of money,
that's different. But the act of saying, no,
we're gonna go change to something really does
make processes better. It's pretty fascinating.
God, we could do a series of podcasts on rehab
versus replacement. I've probably implemented...
ERP or ERP -like enterprise -wide systems across
multiple functional teams, you know, a couple
dozen times with different clients over the years.
And I will tell you, the single most valuable
piece is what you just described. Let's tear
down today's process and understand how it's
working. And then understand how it should work.
And that's a book we've worked. That's just good
rehab. Either you're going to replace it and
do the rehab, or we just do the rehab. is a fragile
trust. Yeah, you can never get executives to
be like, you know what we're going to do? We're
going to go spend a quarter of a million dollars
on the same system that everybody complains about.
I know. And yet that probably would work pretty
good. Dollar to donuts all day long. The value
is so much higher on doing the process improvement.
But it's not shiny. It's not definable. I will
say when... When we've given a process, redesigned
project a name, like code name, watermelon, or
something sexy, watermelon's pretty sexy, but
when you can name it, and executives can identify
a body of work with a name, it makes it seem
more tangible. It gives it shape, right? Yep,
yep. So, yeah. No, it's everything like... Good
question. I was thinking about merger M &A, right?
Oh, sure. So mergers and acquisitions, it's always
buy or build. And it's almost like it's buy or
try. And I'm actually being a little bit serious
on this. Within your internal organization, it
should be buy or try. It just should be. And
my guess is the try actually, I don't know. It
would be really interesting if there was a study
on that. where the output of the try, because
the buy, you basically are forcing people to
change, right? Whereas the try, you basically
need a lot more executive buy -in, a lot more
like, this is what we're doing, a lot more, no,
it has to follow this way, a lot more design.
But you don't have to train people how to use
the tool though. I'll tell you my hypothesis
on why there's such a bias towards buy. and we
send your value try is that a try exercise takes
place in the weeds. That's a guy doing hand -to
-hand combat with transactions and bad profits
every day. A buy happens at the executive, the
board, or the private equity level. And we mask
all the suffering and all of that rehab, all
that integration and adaptive adoption work.
All of that gets pushed. down and that becomes
invisible. But what we get to talk about is a
big transaction. We don't make the headlines
by thinking we've retooled our supply chain process
in this small segment and it's 40 % more effective.
Is that because the try doesn't have a name?
I think it's not a name. There's like, yeah,
back to the name where it's like the decision
has, they are constantly in the view of the decision
of the try. Whereas the buy, they basically have
to show up, force something, come back when it's
done, or come back when it should have been done
because it got pushed by a year and a half and
$80 million. Most of the headlines that I think
about off the top of my head, it'd be an interesting
study, but how many headlines are about organizations
saying, we took a hard look at some of our core
process and we've improved it by 20, 30, 40%.
Sure. Right? Those are more of the exceptions.
They're almost always the soft stories instead
of the hard news stories. There's, there's no
dollars behind them. No, the hard news. Like
that's the hardest part, right? Yeah. Like there,
there's no, there's no sales department from
the SaaS, the SaaS company that's saying, yeah,
we save 20 % of our time and you know. No. Well,
it's hard, even, even when, uh, And I'm sure
you've experienced this being a process guy.
You come to them and say, this is broken. If
we fix it, it could materially impact. It could
be shaving days off delivery, or it could be
saving hundreds or thousands of dollars. Sure.
Those don't feel as tangible as cutting a check
to buy something. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I would
say just culturally, and we'll end it here, but
I would say culturally, we are a consumer society.
And so therefore that buying is, the decision
is easy. It's simpler, right? It's finding budget,
right? Whereas the try is more of a deeper thinking.
And I would say the people that are good at trying
are hard to find. Yeah, well said. Like your
tires. It's a different skill set because it's...
It's influencing, it's leading, it's hard human
work. It's making hard decisions in known ecosystems.
It's holding people accountable to those known
non -Excel processes. It's staying on. And the
thing is, it could be so cheap, because really
all you need is one or two people and the executive
to say, I need it this way. Like that's the funny
thing. Yeah. Chris, I think this episode is the
culture of buy versus try. Cause what you called
out is a cultural mindset, right? Ship from consumerism
to maintenance and reinvestment. Yeah. But yeah.
Culture of buy or try and old man knee. Maybe
that's how this will go. Old man knee. Cry or
buy. That's it. I love it. Have a great week.
You too. All right. See ya.