Guess what, Toby? It is episode 52 of the Prosthetic
Podcast. Dude, that's awesome. We're coming up
on a full lap. I know. We made it. We made it.
I love it. Lap around the sun. Like far up. I'm
kidding. What's on your mind this week? I have
been thinking, well, first of all, you may not
know this, but I had two completely opposite
internships. when I was in college. So first
one at Merrill Lynch, just in a local branch,
just kind of learning about the stock market.
That was the first one. It's a solid internship.
The second one, completely different at a lollipop
factory. At a lollipop factory. What was there?
I kid you not. I was eating lots of lollipops
is what I was doing. So jealous they can. It
was a local lollipop factory in Boise, Idaho.
They made the Rodman pop. If you remember Dennis
Rodman, he was the worm. He had a worm pop. That
was their kind of lame name. Man, how did I miss
that? I know. So anyways, this leads to the topic.
It's his most enviable internship at this besides
bringing it old Dennis Rodman. Yeah. So we had
defects. Meaning you would put the lollipop in
and it would press it around the stick. And maybe
you didn't have enough of the lollipop mixture.
Nobody wants a partial Rodman. Nobody wants a
partial lollipop. They had lots of defects. Like
there were lollipops all over the place that
were partials or they didn't print well. You
could take home as many lollipops as you wanted.
I didn't have health insurance because of an
internship, so I could have got diabetes, but
you know, whatever. But what was interesting
of what this made me think of recently was in
knowledge work Where do defects go? Because in
the lollipop factory we had we had these defects
and we had like bags like hundreds of pounds
of lollipops that just didn't make the cut and
So this is made me think about my day job Where
do like word does? Knowledge work have defects.
Do you not, do you not have a Agnex to your trash
can by your feet specifically for bad ideas and
effective deliverables? Chris, that's a really
great question, right? That power probably sucks.
Throw it in the trash. Okay. Get off your computer,
get it out of there. Or it infects everything.
What are you doing? You raise a good question.
And you know, with a physical good, We have a
very clear expectation for what that looks like.
How do we, what's the template for a good idea
and a good piece of knowledge? What a slippery
slope. The thing that, you know, the thing that
is, was kind of eye -opening, you know, when
you start this internship is that, and maybe
the difference between a factory and typing emails
all day is that Because you're moving physical
product, that physical product that is defective
is obvious. And if it's obvious enough, the problem
is fixed. It's both fixed. Whereas if you send
out an email that has a misspelling or you have
a PowerPoint and you continue to basically communicate
in a way that's not received, that could definitely
be considered a defect. But it's never seen it.
It makes me wonder You and so many folks in the
world of lollipop manufacturing actually produce
better products than the modern knowledge worker
and I might almost argue that by definition we
don't know what our spec is anymore and so we
kind of shuffle information and to your point
if the spelling is correct and if the logic is
Holds together at all that it's hard to argue
that you missed the goal, right? So yeah, so
in a modern computer driven world where we get
paid to be plugged into little monitors all day
long What's a good work product? And where does
the bad how do you identify the bad work product
to put in the bag to be taken home each night?
Yikes. Yes. Have you slept at all this week?
I've been sleeping. But it is really interesting,
right? In that like knowledge work is a lot about
novelty. But novelty isn't productivity. Novelty
is just novelty. Yowzer. And so like, you know,
I think the reason why process that has always
stood out like kind of been this earworm that
I've had and we've talked about it for years.
You and I have. But I think it's because I'm
so kinesthetic and so I learned by doing and
So oftentimes I'll be and I might be a little
bit ADHD But like I'll be sitting in meetings
and I'm like, why are we here? Like what are
we doing? Do we know who our audience is? Do
we know who our customer is in this meeting?
I think Most of the time you could probably say
you don't Like you're just here because we're
supposed to have meetings and if a meetings on
my calendar I should show up That is how it works,
right? I tell you how many, how many mid to latter
quarter career professionals I work with that
do say, I have a whole series of meetings, I'm
jammed up, I'm packed. It's one thing if you're
being called on to make decisions, but a lot
of it, what is it that we're transforming input,
activity, output? Well, what's interesting is
in knowledge work so like in contrast to the
lollipop factory They're these big old bins,
you know, like these big basically pots in that
which you would cook the You know the sugar mixture
and you would add in the flavors and do all the
things right? But you would get it you'd basically
get it hot and then you'd put it in these kind
of roller things and the roller things would
kind of turn it into a little rope a little rope
would be stamped right the interesting thing
is like You can't delay. You can never delay.
And that delay creates the defects, right? So
like, there was these women that would be putting
the sticks in to get it stamped. And it was really
pretty awesome to watch them. They would just
basically put the sticks in and they would lay
the lollipops down on the dryer. But the reason
I bring that up is like, in knowledge work, there's
no hardening of that candy. there's no urgency
to get anything done. And so it can be this perpetual
meeting and clarification during the meeting,
after the meeting, pre -meeting, post -meeting.
Just, let's just do another meeting and talk.
Yeah. Well, and so if you have anybody at the
table that has at all a procrastinating bone
in their body, that one brief meeting can turn
into a month's worth of follow -up and nothing
ever happens. Yeah. Even as you say that, Chris,
I'm looking around my desk at the six half -finished
things that I... Yeah. Maybe that's a unique
thing, but we've talked about those moments of
getting into flow and having enough clear running
room to really be super productive. There was
a lot of good things that happened today, but
one of them was not... crossing important objectives
off my list. And I started the day with two or
three, and I finished the day with the same two
or three plus two more. So somehow I managed
to go backwards and didn't get a single finished
Dennis Rodman hollypop out the door. I know.
That does remind me of like everybody in January,
like, what is it, your New Year's resolution,
my New Year's resolution is still just 20 pounds.
Only 25 more to go, you know, something like
that. Like that's what college work feels like
a lot of times. Well, Chrissy, I think it's an
interesting thing because, you know, as Gen Xers,
we were told that the path to success, and I
think it was in terms of professional success
and certainly not working in the heat or the
cold of whatever weather you're exposed to, but
it was go to school, get a good job and, and
do good work. And the difficulty, in this professional
realm, unless we're providing some very clear
cut transactional service, you know, for in the
business of banking and our job is lending or
as an attorney, we're producing a specific deliverable
for a client. Oftentimes it's hard to see what
the transactional start and stop of something
is, especially when we're inside of a big organization.
You know we could toil away for for weeks or
months or years and not see the completion of
the whole cycle necessarily So yeah Well, there's
a bit of a lulling to sleep right because you
can have so much ways with the knowledge work
that You know everybody productive. Yeah, not
effective Where it's like the real defective
knowledge work is just doing useless well, you
know And it's so hard to know, you know, I think
we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, just
being aligned oftentimes or misaligned. Like
we talked about communication and how that's
kind of like, hey, we need this thing. And you're
like, is that really what you need? Are you looking
for something deeper? Kind of doing that five
why analysis. And I think, you know, because
we're social and because we're territorial and
communal. beings We can get away with that waste
because of the communities which are the our
places of employment, but But you can't do that
on the factory because you've got money that
goes into raw materials and that raw materials
Has to you know turn into a sucker and get a
wrapper on it. It is interesting and I think
you make a distinction too between knowledge
work that is directly facing a customer where
it's the product versus knowledge work inside
of a really complex organism that we call a corporation,
right? And the more steps removed we are from
servicing a customer, the boundaries become and
the less clear the actual purpose of the work
becomes, or at least is at risk of becoming less
clear. Yeah. And one of the things we've talked
about a lot is like, What's the output? And I
think a lot of times we confuse outcome, what
actually happened with the never ending process
of meetings and emails and PowerPoints. You know,
like one of the things we've done in the past
was a cashflow calculator, which was like, look,
if you just broke your finances out and you did
a prediction every month, if we simply did one
thing in business is we just analyze people's
ability to predict and be accurate. we would
find oftentimes we are promoting the confident,
inexperienced, right, or the confident storytellers.
And maybe not necessarily the people that are
more accurate. Well, Chris, so the idea of what
is defective knowledge work, I like this topic
that we've talked through it. There's some examples
where it is, it doesn't produce an outcome. That
feels like wasted time, but Maybe there's other
elements, like how do listeners approach this
idea of managing to lower defects? How do we
six -signa the defects out of knowledge work?
I think we have to be really curious and inquisitive,
right? So like the funny thing is you're talking
about defects and I instantly went to really
nice PowerPoints that have no basis in reality,
right? Where you get Crops or you get resources
based on that pretty output but really from a
system standpoint that could be a defect because
you're actually not helping the system because
you're rewarding you're sending resources to
areas that either aren't proven or Aren't questioned
or right, you know, whatever well and how many
hours go into beautifying a PowerPoint concept
for an audience of ten or less They I know that
I've but that's the norm. That's what was expected
Not a productive use of time and energy But yeah
prettier it is what it feels right the more qualified
the opinion appears Well, the thing is it just
works that's the problem right like it's almost
like it's our internal Storytelling in a human
defect of like we'll believe a story Because
we have to, because our world is so complex.
If you have props, it's that much more believable.
It's super interesting, this idea of defects.
I think we could all take a minute to ask ourselves,
like, what defects am I living with that absorb
my attention, my energy, or simply clutter the
landscape of important things? So sometimes it's
just bad requests, right? Oh, the urgent? Absolutely.
Over the important? If you can do Excel or you
can, you know, create a Power BI report, the
urgent over the important is just a, that is
just a, man, that hits me good because I've been
in those roles where I've seen people get destroyed
by like, oh, you have another flavor of the month
report. You're like, well, is it accurate? And
you're like, well, we're not really sure. It's
impossible to know, but we're going to do it
anyway. Yeah, yeah, how many times are we gonna
use this? Oh, just this one time. It's like well,
you're never gonna you're actually never going
to improve That report if you're just gonna be
at one time cuz I know it's funny I had a really
good a good friend that was just phenomenal at
creating just stitching data together and creating
yeah reports and You know, he was telling me
one time where he he delivered the report his
report kind of got some legs within the organization
And it kind of led to two camps of thought that
were completely different. That would definitely
be the same data supporting two. Yeah, two contrary
opinions. And he's like, Oh my gosh. Yeah, that
would be a difference. I think even as we talk
this through, it just makes me think we have
the international standards for everything under
the sun. You know, from ball bearings to grease
viscosity to actual process work, I guess, goes
back to this. To define a defect, we have to
know what the standard is. I think today's conversation
is that question of, if you don't know what good
is like, if you don't know what the use of the
output is, then there's probably more inquiry,
you know, that's necessary before you just lunge
in. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is like
I would say is is it simply repeatable And if
it's not repeatable and you're not doing a one
-off analysis Then you probably are there's probably
a land of defects In your email in your you know
Excel folders and your power bi reports if it
You're living with defects and actually probably
causing defects. I want more Dennis Rodman lollipops.
I mean, there you go. I'll have to look them
up and send you and see if anybody's selling
them on eBay. But we made it through a year,
my friend. Happy year. Year of conversations.
Thank you for letting us do another year of these.
See you next week. All right. See you. Bye.