Hey, what's up, Toby? We made it another week.
Hey, happy Friday. I know. We made it. All right.
So we're just going to go right into it today.
Let's do it. So I have a question. OK. How many
people need to be in a room before there's a
50 % chance, a coin flip, that two of them share
a birthday? 30 days in a month 12 months in a
year That gets to be a really big number. So
that's clearly wrong. Otherwise, this wouldn't
be a trick question, right? You see how I'm trying
to pull it apart. Oh I mean I think about it
for myself I so rarely encounter people that
have my own birth that share a birthday with
me that I'm inclined to think the number has
to be you know, 30 ish maybe even 45 before I
arrive at a matching but I have a hunch you're
gonna tell me I'm wrong. I'm probably coming
at this question wrong. You're totally wrong,
Toby. I wouldn't have asked a question if you
would have got it right. How many? The answer's
23. 23, and is that for me to find somebody in
the room with a matching birthday or there's
a 50 % chance that I will share a birthday? 50
% chance that two people in the room will share
the same birthday. Boy, how narcissistic is that
of me that I'm imagining that I would be one
of the two, right? I believe... you get to like
an over a 90 % chance at about 40 people. OK.
OK. Or something like that. But the number's
smaller. And the reason we're talking about this,
this is not the birthday podcast. This is the
podcast. But it was my birthday recently last
month. Anyway. It was. Happy belated birthday,
by the way. It comes down to the challenge of
the interdependencies. and the impact of those
number of people. So like what's funny is like
we think that intuitively we think that if there
is to be a 50 % match that this number is going
to be higher. It actually is smaller just because
of raw statistics because when you walk into
the room that one person doesn't match with like
when one person walks into the room they match
with that one person. Then when two people walk
walk into the room, they match with two people.
And when the third person - Potentially agree,
yeah. Yeah, they potentially match. And so basically
it creates this thing. And I think we have the
reverse problem oftentimes in business, which
is pull in not the appropriate amount of people.
Because of that, one person comes in, two people,
it's interaction between two. Three then you've
got three links for you know Everybody's linking
with each other and I think that is a that is
definitely an area that can have process step
Well, let me step back for a second. So sure
this birthday paradox That the number is smaller
than we expect to be able to find a match between
two items This feels this feels like it would
hold true when we're doing product market fit
And so if I have a new solution versus I have
five solutions taking to market, and how many
am I trying to match them against different customer
segments or use cases, the more numbers I have,
it probably isn't the full compounded number,
right? The 25 to the nth or whatever the calculation
is. My high school math teachers would slap me,
because I'm sure that's where we first encountered
that. But it would be a much smaller number.
But I think what you're touching on is that we
often follow that same line of logic where more
is better when, in fact, when we're building
teams or trying to arrive consensus rather than
matching. Yeah. Consensus is you're suggesting
maybe even a smaller number is better. Yeah.
Why do you think that is? I mean, I understand
intuitively I get there, but I love that you
think about these things usually before we jump
on a call on a Friday. So unpack it. I think,
I think it's because we're, we're, we need community.
We're territorial. So like the bigger something
is, the more people we pull in. Which, you know,
I think, I think, and I've also been noticing
just in my, in my meetings, you know, before,
before COVID, it was two or three of us in a,
in a room. Imagine that talking face to face
with, you know, reading those non latent verbal
cues of like, hey, you dumb ass, that was something
stupid, which you can't say out loud, otherwise
you go and talk to HR. But now I'm just seeing
more and more, just the larger number of people
in meetings. Because it's so much easier just
to add somebody to a Zoom or a Teams meeting
versus coordinating their logistics of where
they're physically at. Is that why you think
it's happening? I don't know. That would be,
I guess I'm expressing an intuitive assumption.
It's a really good call out. It's just easy to
just interrupt someone's day. It's funny that
you say that. Someone was talking about texting
being what a telephone call was historically,
meaning when we grew up, the telephones were
on the wall. Imagine that. That was a thing.
Um, indeed, you know, the big old kids will never
understand the rotary phones where it's like,
gosh, dang it. I don't want to have dial a nine
because it just takes forever. We can't be friends.
You have too many nines in your phone. Yeah,
we do. We digress. Yes. But, but, but it's interesting
that we basically have injected our lives with
distractions and pulling people into something.
has almost become a bad habit of bad process.
Based on convenience. Yeah. I do know the best
way to kill an otherwise healthy initiative is
to basically send it into that endless cycle
with let's add one more person and we have one
more stakeholder and now we have to bring them
up to speed and everybody's opinions are equal.
Feel like I feel like process by committee specifically
designed by committee is a certainty to fail.
Oh, yeah, right and so It's it's interesting
that you raised that question because I'm hearing
you say too that even in a physical meeting Somebody
will step out and say hey Bob. Can you join us
in the conference room? When Bob might not have
traditionally been necessary to arrive at a decision
or move forward in the past That's really interesting
you think that people are less confident Or that
the complexity has increased and therefore we
need additional experts. I wonder if it has to
do with just a social disconnection that we got.
Yeah, that hungry for more humans in our little
space. And we replaced it with people with screens.
Because it was easy. And then we just build.
And I don't know, I wish I had grand solutions
on how to solve this. But I just think sometimes
that the less is more, especially when it comes
to process. Yeah. Well, I know when I first started
doing process engineering work, this was old
school. The prevailing wisdom was hammer and
champy. So this was new and emerging insights
about how to redesign processes and make them
more effective in the early 90s. they were building
it on this concept of what is a skunkworks team?
How do we find a small team? Let's remove all
the other distractions so that they can stay
solely focused on the project and the effort.
And at the time, the thought was, gosh, is five
people too many? Is six people too many? But
the goal was to be really intentional about making
sure you have the right people in the room. a
lot of the logic was the byproduct of fewer channels
of communication, fewer conflicting opinions.
Sure. You didn't have the same overlap of expertise.
And so you were taking an expert at their word.
But in the early 90s, the Internet was still
like, you know, still being designed in Netscape.
Was it DARPA browser? Yeah. You mean a couple
of professors and a bunch of military guys? No.
And it was all pre -AI where we could have a
confident and often wrong opinion injected almost
immediately. So it is hard. I mean, maybe the
question I would ask is like, in today's world,
how do we figure out who is the expert voice
to help guide decisions? If socially we want
more people in the room, maybe there's a role
for them. Maybe we want them to be present to
it and witness the conversation, but nobody ever
says, hey, Toby, can you come join us and just
shut up? Like you don't have an opinion in this,
but we want you to hear it live. And maybe that's,
and at least for me, that's probably the right
answer is like, did you try to shut up? Can we
mute you and just have you listen? That should
be our next podcast. I'll just talk. I tried
that one time this year. It was awful. It was
no fun. Maybe we'll do that. I'll join you, but
I won't say anything and everybody else. Is that
just Chris by himself? Yeah. You can edit me
out of the... Yeah, I don't know. I mean, thinking
back about some of the recent decisions, some
of the choices that have been made that were
effective, was there a certain pattern that you
saw emerging? Because I think what we're talking
about is arriving at healthy decisions that don't
create all this debt to be serviced. Yeah, I
think a lot of it like I've always been super
successful and I have a small team Yeah, and
it's like this is where we're headed. This is
what we're doing We have choice. We have choice
a choice B. It's it's this it's the The closer
you can get to the big the people doing the work
Yeah, I think the more efficient you can be as
long as you're aligned And maybe that's the problem.
The more people you have, the more opinions you
have, right? You get to 23 people in a room,
you've got two strong voices that agree that
might not be aligned and you're heading to crazy
town. Well, in a large group too, you're going
to have things like the formal and informal hierarchy
and the political powers that teams exercise,
things we don't always talk about. This point
of alignment, too, though, makes me think, I
was jokingly saying, Toby, you're invited, but
you don't get to talk. I do think there's probably
a place to say, we're going to be having a conversation.
And these are the only people that have a voting
say in this. And I don't think we are as intentional
about how we structure our meetings to let people
know what role we're inviting them to fulfill.
Or even what the purpose of the meeting is. Yeah.
There's no reason why you can't have meetings
that are all about building camaraderie. Whether
it's remote or whether it's going to lunch or
whatever. That's just good for the soul. And
then there's other ones where it's like, look,
this is a decision -making meeting or this is
a research meeting. But oftentimes it's like,
we're just all here pretending like we know what
we're doing, but we don't really know and it's
not clear. Chris I think that's super interesting
because what you're suggesting is Could be a
very simple solution and it begins with whoever's
convening Yeah, and if you don't have an agenda
at least you should have a purpose so that people
know why they're being asked to forego an hour
You and I have a friend who's recently taken
on a new job. He's about 18 months in and he
said I'm in no less than six hours of meetings
a day Six hours of me Not all of which are his
that he's convened. Yeah. Yeah. And so he just
said, I don't know when I'm supposed to get anything
done. Well, and I think that that's ultimately
the problem, right? Like we've we basically if
we tried to get everybody in the room. And I
don't know if it's because we don't want to be
offended or we don't know. Like we're trying
to get this group think that actually could be
helpful because we don't know where we're headed.
Right. But it's almost like it's almost like
if you're not aligned. It's almost like the next
best thing is to pull people in. But that doesn't,
that isn't necessarily the right move though.
Yeah. And I don't know why, I don't know why
we do that. Like I'm thinking back, you know,
in a thousand years ago, why would we have done
that? Right? And maybe, you know, if we're out
on the plains in the Savannah in Africa, you
and I, just hanging out, having a grand old time.
But my guess is, is maybe, maybe it's that simple.
There's this human nature thing where if things
are not clear, You surround yourself with community.
Yeah And and because it's so simple we grab more
people put them on a room put them in the room
and The reality is is like that's that may or
may not be needed Hey at least for my part. I
know there's times where The hierarchy like the
org design hierarchy is different than the decision
rights Yeah, and There's times where I find myself
in a meeting and realize we don't have the proper
decision maker. Oh Yeah, yeah, right And so in
this exploration, it's one thing to say hey We
randomly have two people that share a birthday.
It only took 23 of us It's very different to
say can we commit to a course of action that
changes people's lives on a day -to -day basis?
Yeah, who's authorized to actually make that
decision? Yeah, so It does feel like with all
the screens going on and all the technology,
we forget sometimes that ultimately, you know,
the impacts we're making can be really significant
on that very common element. Well, we get confused
between what is crafting versus what is community
-type effort. Yeah. Right, like... I think I
mentioned that these guys built the deck on my
backyard and they had a plan, right? So they
had a plan and it was basically like this small
team. Again, it was like three to five people
just doing what they needed to do. They came
in, they were fully autonomous, did their thing.
If there was a question that the contractor would
call me and I would answer and we were off enrolling.
But they knew what the end state was. Did they
ask the electrician how long the two by eight
should get cut down to? Did they ask him how
much cement was required for a footing? I kind
of feel like what you're touching on with the
deck, which is super simple and probably these
guys are executing without any confusion. Yeah.
There's no asking, right? So it's only if you
run into a problem, right? And yet it's almost
like we want to all bring the problems or something.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know really
what the, what the, what the right answer is,
but I do think it's, I do think, you know, the
point here is if you're, if you don't think about
sometimes, I guess the point is, is sometimes
if you have bad habits, they can lead to on the
unintended consequences of just bad process.
I'm also hearing too though from a process perspective
that that there's there's a correlation between
Complexity and then the importance of clarity
perhaps Yeah, it's not more complexity means
more bodies It's that more complexity means we
need to be able to unpack it in such a way that
we can get the clarity to take that correct And
then what are your what are your constraints,
right? So like, you know, I know I know As I
mentioned before, huge fan of Toyota, you know,
One Piece Flow, like in many, many reasons I
love the way that they do their business. And
they spend three months thinking, thinking and
arguing and thinking some more and arguing and
thinking some more and arguing. And yet it's
just part of their culture because, and they
also, they also They've also kind of flipped
the script as far as who's the most important
like in their culture The most important are
the people that are actually doing the work.
I Don't think that I think that's very contrary
to our Western capitalists minded hierarchical
design. Yep, you know because it's Because it's
very easy to be nebulous and then go and take
take credit When something emerges, oh my god,
so true. It's like it's like You know, it's like
my wife, when she, you know, she planted a garden,
you know, it's, it's not like she goes out to
the garden and say, look at those seeds that
I made. You're like, no, they're just, the seeds
just grew. Like, that's just what happens. But
like I think the business can be that way. No,
it's true. Chris, I think I love this, the birthday
paradox. Interesting, probably not the best way
to try to solve complex problems. No. Maybe a
very common way, but not necessarily the best
way. Yeah. This week, next week, just move intentionally.
Yeah. And we'll catch everyone next week. Thanks,
man. Good stuff, buddy. All right. See you. See
you.