Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
128. Roles and Responsibilities
Next, we dig into the critical roles and responsibilities within a podcasting company and beyond. By sharing our own experiences, we emphasize the necessity of formalizing roles to avoid overlaps and inefficiencies, especially as companies grow. The conversation touches on the benefits of having clear career growth and title advancement, showing how these initiatives not only support individual aspirations but also foster team development and organizational success. We also discuss the challenges faced by individual contributors in corporate settings, where bureaucracy can stifle productivity, contrasting it with the agile nature of smaller teams.
Lastly, join us as we navigate through the complexities of strategic planning within corporate roles. Featuring team leaders like Bruce and Clark, who must balance guiding scrum ceremonies and coordinating with multiple stakeholders, we address the pitfalls of compartmentalization and the need for inter-departmental communication to enhance efficiency and productivity. Setting specific, measurable goals and having hard conversations about resource constraints are crucial for aligning team efforts with company objectives. And don't miss our fun segment "What Do You Meme," where we react to viral content and generational trends, like the "Skibbity Toilet" YouTube series, offering a humorous take on the ever-evolving digital landscape.
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Yeah, you are Nice. Wait, they can't hear that, can they?
Speaker 2:They hear what they can't hear. The now recording no, they've never been able to hear it.
Speaker 1:Right, they're poor ear holes. They've never had to do it.
Speaker 2:Now recording. If you've ever thought I should be a guest on Corporate Strategy, let me tell you, the only reason you really want to do it is so you can actually hear the thing we talk about at the beginning of every podcast, which is craig the recording bear joining and saying now recording so that doesn't motivate you to join the show. Then I don't know what will. Yeah, seriously, I agree. Also, we need hr, like if we just talked about it yeah, yeah, where are these hr people?
Speaker 2:well, I think, uh, the comment that was made about them being sort of like, you know, not secret, but like very policy driven and you know the things that like can and can't share, like I get it. I get it. Most hr people couldn't join the show, right, but I know there's one person out there. I know one of you wants to talk. We can do it anonymous, in all honesty. If you're an hr person and you want to be anonymous, we can do it anonymous, in all honesty. If you're an HR person and you want to be anonymous, we can do that too. What's the best way to reach us if it's not the Discord?
Speaker 1:What you can email us? What email Put? It on the website, like on the website, if you just go to the corpusstrategybiz.
Speaker 2:The biz.
Speaker 1:If you go there, you can contact us. We have a little contact form. Send us a little message. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 2:We really want an HR person to talk to. We need HR Help. I need an adult.
Speaker 1:We need an adult real quick.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to our strategy. Oh, hey, what.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I guess we're here again. We're stepping in this elevator episode which I'm just gonna be me interrupting you every single chance I get right when you're about to say something. I'll just go into a tangent yeah, so 128. Oh no, I'm just kidding, go ahead, okay, you sure. Yeah, I wasn't going to troll you, I was actually going to let you go, okay.
Speaker 1:The fake out was too good. I couldn't. I was like I bet. I knew exactly what we were going to do. I was 10 steps ahead. I knew you were going to think yeah, and then Okay, this is the worst podcast ever Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I'm so scared to talk, clark. You've made me afraid. You've made me afraid to be myself. Welcome back to Corporate Shadows, the podcast. Give me an email, I'm Bruce.
Speaker 1:And I'm Clark and we are on a call that you've probably been on today, where everyone just interrupts each other because of lack of internet speed or people not using the ability to alert others that they have a question and people not respecting other people's times. I bet you were there today. I know I was there today.
Speaker 2:This sounds incredibly personal. What is going on in your life, clark Vibe check. Yeah, yeah, give me that vibe. Yeah, give me that vibe.
Speaker 1:You always ask me first, and I appreciate it, why are people interrupting your meetings? It's just the way it is. I don't know if it's the time of year, I don't know if it's the projects, but what I do know is nobody can be patient and just let others speak. Everybody just got to jump in, speak over everybody else and then you know it doesn't even matter if you have raised hands in the meeting. You use Slack, right, or do you use Teams?
Speaker 2:We use Slack for messaging communication. We use Teams for meetings.
Speaker 1:Okay. So yeah, teams has like the raise hand feature. Slack has like a question or something like that. If you're in those meetings, so yeah, you know, you put those up and it's such a great feature. It says, hey, you're number one in line, you're number two in line, you're number three in line, and you think people would take turns. But no, somebody who doesn't even have their hand raised just hops off mute and says, hey, what about this? So let's talk about this. And those poor patient people tried to be respectful, tried to be polite. They just get stepped on. What's up with that?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite meeting isms is when you can tell someone really wants to talk and they patiently wait for the other person to stop talking so that they can swiftly transition the entire train of thought of conversation onto their point. And I know I get that way sometimes but, like I know that, I know that about myself, so I always try to think like, if I, if I am going to go tangent and I do this in this podcast with you, I'm sure I want to make sure I acknowledge what you say. First, to basically be like I'm not leaving you. Just said this entire thing. I'm not going to leave you in the speaking rut of void of nothing while we transition to my way. More important and cool thing that I'm going to say like that, yeah, that right there is.
Speaker 1:I don't know, it's always bugged me and I know, as an excitable person, I get that way myself, but I try to be cognizant of it and right, don't it's like when you know the answer and you just want to like blurt it out or you have something super insightful that's going to change the whole direction of the conversation. You're just eager, you, you're like I got to say it. I got to say it now. But I agree with you. It is unfortunate. And what drives me even more up a wall is when somebody says something and there should be like an action item and they just ignore it. Yeah, hold on. I literally have to pause the meeting with this. Hold on. It feels like there was an action needed there. Like, who is going to do it? Anybody?
Speaker 2:Have you ever let those silences move on? Have you ever used that to your advantage though? Because I certainly have. You have to tell this story. Oh well, I mean, like, I don't do it all the time, but if it's like, if it's work that I'm going to have to do and I don't want to do it, or I think it's stupid, and there's an opportunity to be like, if I just sit silent for a few seconds, someone else will start talking and we'll blow past this, and so long as the person who said it doesn't bring it up again, I'm in the clear. Oh, I wait. I'll wait like 3-4 seconds. I'll even do an example. So like, give me a task.
Speaker 1:Clark, like any task any task, hey, uh, do you want me to assign it directly to you or just say it out loud?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. What was that? Oh hey, by the way, that just reminded me. You know, moving along, how else is the rest of your?
Speaker 1:week been. You're the worst. That's the worst thing.
Speaker 2:I've ever experienced in my life. It works, though Like it totally. It throws the brain off. It throws the brain off. The brain can't handle it because you want to talk about the rest of your week and I pretended like I couldn't hear you and you and you know that's. It's just a tactic no one does that.
Speaker 1:I do my current place. No one. I have never heard this. This is like 3d chess like everyone else playing checkers, you're out here playing 3d chess, dodging action items.
Speaker 2:Well if I don't dodge them, I gotta have to do them, so you gotta deal it somehow wow that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I like that yeah, I just experienced a day of like yeah, people just being inconsiderate, talking over others, people just not like taking action items and also people just, yeah, veering conversations all over the place. It's like we're on one topic and then they just jump to a complete other. I'm like my brain just can't, I just can't. We got to finish this one thing and then we can move to the next and the last thing.
Speaker 1:I'm just on a rant today, the last thing that also drives me up a wall is when people are like, yeah, you know, we should schedule another meeting to talk about it.
Speaker 2:I'm like why not now? Like talk about it right now It'll take us two minutes to figure this out together.
Speaker 1:They're like yeah, I think we should get another meeting to talk about the agenda for that other meeting that we have to schedule. I'm like no, no, no, let's do the outline right now and ask someone be done with this, I don't want another meeting.
Speaker 2:Meetings, for meetings is the most corporate, corporate thing I can think of, and that's one of the few like well, not one of the few, but it's one of the many advantages I take advantage of working in a startup is you don't do that Like you, you're on the meeting. You either have run out of time and need to schedule more meeting to cover the thing because you've burned time, which is bad, or you get it done right now. It's like well, we'll just keep running this meeting. We're going to, we're going to figure it out, get it done Like. That is one of the advantages of being small, but I don't miss that at all. Let me tell you the meetings before meetings to have a meeting oh my gosh, that was.
Speaker 1:It is Like why do you think people, when they're in meetings, they can't just do the thing? That's going to take just a minute or two to figure out real quick. I want to schedule more time.
Speaker 2:I believe that meetings are a mark of productivity for some people, and they will use the pre meeting or the meeting before the meeting to prove that they're valuable and they're controlling the situation. We're doing a little prep work before we get to the actual meeting. I want to make sure we all are aligned and our gears are fitting together so we can move in one motion at the real meeting, which you probably would have done anyway, right, like you could have just sent an email. Here's the agenda. Here's what we're going to talk about. Here's the content.
Speaker 1:Let's go. No, no, we got to have a pre-meeting for the meeting. I find that people that are not very good at doing real work I did a lot of work that was doing it and I was like, hold on, we got 15 minutes left in this meeting. Why don't we do it right now? We just we just chat about. It was just really weird and I wonder if it's just because they were all open to it and I was like it's so it was just really weird Cause I was like, yeah, let's just type it out in the chat, we can figure this out together.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it's like the brain space of they just can't, or they just are multitasking so hard that they just can't even put their mind to do it at that very moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that. I do get that. But if you're on the meeting already, just do it. Yeah, why wait?
Speaker 1:Do it now.
Speaker 2:That's truly strange, I think some people do get in their own head about. Well, this meeting was for talking about the latest feature. We can't talk about team productivity on a feature meeting. We can't do that. You absolutely can't. You got time. Previous meeting adjourned. New meeting started, let's go. Yep, yeah, why waste time? Yeah, I think that's a very corporate like oh, I can't repurpose this. You absolutely can Anytime you want. I agree.
Speaker 1:How are you?
Speaker 2:You've heard my rant. You always ask about me first I'm good, I'm good, I'm great, I'm just dandy. Fine, that's good. Living the life, dreaming the dream, believing in myself, taking time to meditate and think and live Is that true? Not at all.
Speaker 1:So it sounds so Zen. I was very proud of you.
Speaker 2:I like nothing, I'm nothing. You know I'm working. It's Friday. I'm done with work for the week. I'm happy. I'm done with work for the week. I'm ready for not work for two days. And I got no other emotions in my body except elation to not be working for two days.
Speaker 1:I love that I'm going to make you do work today on this topic. By the way, Fantastic. Thanks, Mark so you're welcome, but we'll get there. We'll get there. I'm happy to hear you're just in that mindset of, you're just ready for the weekend, your weekend vibes.
Speaker 2:You're done. I am 100% checked out of the library, as they say.
Speaker 1:I like that. That's great Good. You've had a much better day than me.
Speaker 2:I did, I do. That's it. I thought you were transitioning. I did, I do.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:I thought you were transitioning, that's why.
Speaker 1:I was leaving the space. Well, I was thinking about it. Do you have any news? Do I have any news?
Speaker 2:Do I have any news? Any news? No, I don't, I don't think I do either.
Speaker 1:I think we move right to the topic. What do you say? Let's hit it hard, all right, let topic. What do you say? Let's hit it hard, all right, let's do it yeah I, I said it up front I'm gonna make you do a little work in this episode and I'm sorry about it, but I but I got to. I got to my own sanity, for the sanity of the people. It's time we talk about roles and responsibilities on ours. We could break down ours.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I can't, I got to go.
Speaker 1:Two roles we have in this company I got to run. Actually, the three roles we have in this company will make it really simple for the people. It's co-host and co-host and then it's automation. And if that third leg automation didn't exist, this podcast wouldn't happen.
Speaker 2:There's also the contractor. We use the occasional guest contributor, capitalist correspondent, charity correspondent.
Speaker 1:So basically, we get other people to do our work for us. That's contracting baby, so our responsibilities are easy our responsibilities are so simple we just show up.
Speaker 2:It's really easy for us it is, it is. I mean I wouldn't say it's easy. Nothing, nothing in life is easy. But we've certainly gotten to the point with the podcast where I feel it's not the kind of work it used to be, especially for me, which is great. No complaints, yeah.
Speaker 1:You used to do all the work and pay for everything, so yeah, compliance yeah.
Speaker 1:You used to do all the work and pay for everything. So now I'm doing one of those two things. But, in all seriousness, the topic for today roles and responsibilities I wanted to. I had this thought and I'm like how do you conduct a good roles and responsibilities meeting and what are kind of the outcomes of that meeting? And so I know you've been through these, bruce, I've been through these and all of them like you have this meeting, you get everybody in a room, you kind of talk about things and they kind of just fall to the wind and disappear and you end up just doing exactly what you were doing before.
Speaker 2:Is that your experience? I want to clarify and I also want to clarify for the listener, just in case they might not have gone through this before. Are you talking about specifically, when you have a meeting with a manager or a leader that is, talking through your roles and responsibilities, or, like your team's roles and responsibilities? I think?
Speaker 1:it's the latter. On the team's responsibility side, this is a team meeting. Yeah, okay, a little team meeting. You got all the cross-functional people in there. No matter what you do, if you're on the marketing side or if you're on the engineering side, it's like you might have a project manager or a scrum master. You've got the individual contributors. It'd be like the blog writers or the software developers. You've got the people who are kind of doing the strategy work or defining what to do to do next, kind of the product people, if you will. And I want to talk through how do you conduct, or what would be, a good roles of responsibility session that you could have that might help the people. I did this this week, did you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm trying to. I mean, I I'm trying to uh up level my title and by doing so I want to up level my team's titles. So I've built basically sort of a, a go-to-market team plan. It outlines specifically roles and responsibilities, because one thing at a startup that's very difficult, especially in the early days, is everyone does everything and as we're beginning to mature and grow and hire more people, suddenly thankfully everyone me specifically doesn't have to do everything anymore, and that's part of that is defining roles and responsibilities. What is bruce responsible for? What is bruce's team responsible for? What are the individuals responsible for at an individual level? So that's give you the walkthrough on where I'm at with this met with the team, built a, a document, wrote everything down.
Speaker 1:Actually, if you don't mind, Bruce, I'm curious, so I think you mentioned it already, but maybe we can summarize when do you think you need one of these? Because some people might be feeling the pain, but they don't really understand what's leading to that. What would you say your pain points were? Or to you, maybe it's just your scaling and your reasoning is just yeah, you have to be able to divide and conquer now, otherwise everyone's just stepping on each other's toes, ironically I answered this question today to one of my teammates because they were.
Speaker 2:They were asking like why are we doing this? And I said well, basically in corporate and not in startup land, but in corporate land it's always good for you to be thinking about your next move in growth. So you know, I've been with my company for over two and a half years now and I'm still in the same spot. I mean, technically, my team has grown, but I have not. And back of my mind starts itching, thinking, oh, I like having a new title every two years, so what do I do to get there? And then I remembered well, they always love to have these conversations about what's next, what's six months look like for you, Kind of like our topic in the corporate fam discord we're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know what's what's one year, two year, three years? It's always what six months look like for you and your team. So I'm going to get ahead of this. I'm going to start this process now. I'm going to basically promote my own title and by doing this I'm also going to bring my team with me, promote their titles, change the name of the team, change the focus, grow the team, kind of put in some positions for new hires and things like that. So it was spurned by a desire out of selfishness but led to something that's a little bit more team oriented.
Speaker 1:I love that, but I actually don't think it's selfish. I don't think it's selfish at all. I think it's Well. It started from selfishness. Well, yes, it might have been rooted in selfishness, but overall it's good for everybody, like if you guys are providing value and you can continue to grow and provide more value. You can clarify what value that is. That's what any good manager should be doing, because it's creating opportunity for you, creating opportunity for your team, and it's also going to be better for the company.
Speaker 2:Yep. So I built this plan with that exact intention in mind. How do we say what we're going to do, what we're not going to do, how is this good for the company? I presented it to my my boss, the chief marketing officer. He had a couple of feedback, but I mean, you know, he even said it's like this is like 75, 80% of the way there. Good job. So you know, now I went back and I went my team again today talk through some of the points, and I do have some hard conversations I'm going to have to have soon, but that's fine. Nothing, nothing. Old Bruce can't. Bruce can handle a hard conversation. I think the problem is people can't handle Bruce having those hard conversations with them. The challenge, and uh, yeah, I'm going to continue with this process and hopefully it leads to everyone being elevated, which would be that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, well, yeah, let's uh, I'll give some of the things I see on the corporate side why you might need this and what pain you might be feeling, which something like this might help with. And then I'd love to hear, like, how you kind of broke this down, because you mentioned a grid, you mentioned certain things. We can kind of dive into that and see if we can give some helpful tips for someone, how someone might go through this. But I actually love the angle you took. It's like elevating your team, which is not something I've really thought about in terms of, like you know, defining your team's roles and responsibilities actually is kind of making that strategy. It's elevating your role. I love that. That's an awesome perspective. The ones I see are more negative.
Speaker 2:I was just going to ask. Like you brought this topic up with an intention and I'm sure something has happened to make you think, oh, we should talk about this. I'm curious what does it look like on your side?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I've mentioned before I'm at a big company and we do software development, just technology development in general, and there's a lot of stuff to do. We got a lot of teams. We got hundreds and hundreds of people and thousands across the company, but hundreds and hundreds kind of on the engineering and product side of the house. And something we often run into is you start, the bigger you get and the more you do, the more layers of kind of management start getting layered in and needing for project managers and scrum masters and, you know, portfolio managers and whatever it might be, product managers, and it starts to be all these different layers of like okay, you know, our goal is to build this piece of software. What does everybody do in terms of doing this work, so that way one person doesn't kind of take it all on their back or everybody ends up doing what everyone else is doing just creates pure chaos.
Speaker 1:So I've been seeing a lot lately the latter of that, which is just pure chaos, where everybody is kind of stepping on each other's shoes and they're starting to have conversations with either senior leadership or even other people we're coordinating with and just causing more confusion because they'd be like oh yeah, I went to this team and I talked about this and we're like wait, hold on. You went and talked about this and what did you share? And they'll say what they said and it's like but that's not correct. You probably just sent them for a swirl. And then what happens? Bruce, we have to schedule meetings, talk about the swirl which then leads to more meetings, and saying, and some smart project manager will say I think we need to have a weekly hourly sync being between our groups so we can talk about where we are in this project and that, literally, the the more scope you have, the more projects you do, the more meetings there will be. It's exponential and I think that's what we're running into currently.
Speaker 2:Can I ask did this start with a why and I know that's a very marketing question, because marketing always starts with a why, or it should, but this sounds so checkboxy to me. Is it checkboxy or did this actually start with good intentions?
Speaker 1:I think we know what we need to be doing, but the how to do it can get complicated as it kind of spans the organization and the amount of work continues to increase and more people are included. So, as you kind of do that, I think it's just getting harder and harder to like have one person be the glue to pull everybody together. So they're trying to put process and people in place so that everybody can worry about just what they need to do and excel at what they need to do. If you're a developer, you can write code. You don't need to worry about the coordination of the stuff and the figuring out of the testing plans and the releasing of the thing. You can just write great code. I think that's what they're trying to get to is like get the experts to do their thing really, really well and not be inhibited by the rest of the stuff that you need to coordinate.
Speaker 2:Which I personally love. Based on stories you told me about your company, like I often wonder, why are they not letting the people just do the things they're good at? Like you seem inundated by meetings all the time. Oh yeah, seems you are. I don't even know why it implied that it might not be happening. It's happening.
Speaker 1:You're in a meeting right after this. You're in a meeting right after this. Gosh, dang it, clark. But yeah, I think that's the issue, because you add in all these layers, right, and at some point you get. It's a telephone game, to put it in its simplistic terms. You get far away from the implementation or the challenge you're facing.
Speaker 1:Let's take a really realistic example. I'm a software engineer and I'm blocked because I'm waiting on another team to build an API or something or ingest a piece of data that I need from whatever database. And so what do I do? I come to my daily stand up and say, hey, I'm blocked on my development task, I need some help trying to figure this out. And, because of all layers, scrum Master jumps in OK, great, I think I can help. And then the product person jumps in and says I think I can help too, we're going to go talk to that team and figure out if they can get this thing done. And so they go and do that. And it's the you know one, you know deviation away from the truth, cause it's like hey, we need this and our developer is busy coding, but we need this no-transcript.
Speaker 2:The point where I'm starting to have anxiety because I left corporate so I never to deal with this again. And here you are telling me this story. Where's the roles and responsibilities? But it's because it's because they're specifically trying to shield the expert from dealing with this again, I follow not doing it. It's not working.
Speaker 1:Not working, well, I know we're trying to shield the expert from dealing with this. I get it, I follow, not doing it. It's not working. Not working well. Now we're trying to figure out. I mean, roles and responsibilities might not be the perfect way to solve that particular issue.
Speaker 2:No, but it is part of that, it is Agree. So just a quick thought here. You I mean it's tough because I'm in the exact opposite situation Like it is so funny that we are on two different sides of this coin here.
Speaker 2:I love it when I find a block or there is someone, something, hindering my way or my team's way, I just skip over it and go to the next in line, bring my teammate and say you two talk, now figure it out on your own, go, done, right. Problem solved. Like if, if we need to skip another person, we skip another. Like we're small enough we can do that and we're agile enough because it's we're small that it's not really an issue.
Speaker 2:Yep, the downside of this is our roles and responsibilities are so vast. There is no real well, we don't do this or we don't do that because that's the best team's responsibility. Instead, it's well, we're not the creative marketing team, but we have been known to make a YouTube thumbnail on the fly when the creative team doesn't do it. So like you gotta just go. But you can't do that in your situation at all, which is why the reason why I say all this is you know some people might not know because you're shielded from this a lot. When you're an individual contributor, you you don't run into or hopefully you're shielded enough that you don't see the complexity of the interworkings of teams and APIs and cross department necessitiesities and conversations like it becomes a headache and a nightmare so quickly and and the second you try to break that mold to your point.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, I'm just gonna go reach out like you, don't ask anyone, you just go do it you get your hands slapped you get your hands slapped, you said it's perfect. You get your wrist slapped because it's like why did you go talk to that team that that's not their priority and you should have raised this to your scrum master. Knock on and talk to that team. They should have done that for you.
Speaker 2:The can-do attitude gets squashed so quick in corporate.
Speaker 1:They're like focus on coding, not solving the problem. Uh-huh, but how can you code if you're blocked? Exactly so the culture that ends up getting built is you just sit on your hands and wait. Correct, all right, I guess I'm stuck. I guess I'll just sit here and wait till greasy boy product owner goes and helps me unblock this. Yeah, because if I do anything else I'm going to get my wrist slapped. So how does how?
Speaker 2:does roles and responsibilities help fix this?
Speaker 1:I think one thing it helps with, because a lot of times and you tell me if you agree with this when you're an individual contributor and you don't understand those things, you get your wrist slapped. So something that helps is understanding those things and then calling out why it doesn't make sense, or bringing challenges to the table. You're like but how are you going to help solve this? And I think that's where it helps. A lot is saying like these different levels of abstraction are not helping, and here's an example where we were blocked for seven days.
Speaker 1:I literally couldn't do anything because it was just misrepresenting telephone call between five different people, rather than me just tapping my database buddy on the back and saying, hey, I, I just need this field and he's like all right, cool, I'll code it in. Here it is. So I'm curious, because you went through this what did that grid kind of look like and what could people kind of do to bring this down? Because I think what I'm visualizing in my head is almost like a grid where on the left you've got the role on the team, in the middle you've got a description, on the side you've got some examples of what those things look like in actuality and then maybe the outcomes all the way on the far right, saying this is why it makes a difference.
Speaker 2:That's way more complicated than what I created, while at the same time fairly accurately summarizing the goal of the document itself. I created, while at the same time fairly accurately summarizing the goal of the document itself. So the grid is truly just like title, role. And then what's the difference between title and role Title and role, I guess, so you know, head of alliances and then what is that responsibility set? You know a few bullets there, and then at the end of the document, instead of having each one of these tied to a specific role, it's the team outcomes. It's, like you know, share of voice increased by X percent and onboard new alliance partners by three a year, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Like it's brief and it's short, and the one thing I really wanted to try and make sure we got in there was not just what we're going to do, but very specifically leave out things that we're not going to do or create new roles that we need to hire for to take on those responsibilities. This, again, works really great in a startup because you're always growing. It doesn't work so great in your startup, because you're always growing. It doesn't work so great in your situation because you might not have the ability to grow. You might've grown all you can grow and now you have to make it work with the team you've got my. My question to you is if you, let's say, you simplified your roles and responsibilities not destroying the grid or, you know, going super high level but your team focuses on feature or you know like owning the product management of these features right here Also include the requirements not just roles, responsibilities, but requirements.
Speaker 2:What teams are you interacting with and what do you need from them and what is the SLA expected? You add that into your document and suddenly there has to be a conversation with the other teams. What are their roles and responsibilities? What are their expectations? Can they meet these SLAs with you? And I think that would force a conversation to occur where it's not just you looking inwardly but everyone looking outwardly saying can I actually deliver? What is expected of my team? For these four other teams I'm working with, I love that because it makes it real.
Speaker 1:That's always the challenge with these things is it's like Bruce is responsible for guiding the scrum ceremonies, which might be easy, or it might be a nightmare, and I can't do it by myself.
Speaker 2:Exactly right.
Speaker 1:Like Clark, is responsible for guiding the strategy of the product feature roadmap. It's like, okay, that's a heavy one. I might have to coordinate with six different people to figure out how we get that done.
Speaker 2:You show that to the six other teams and say, hey, does this sound right for you? And they say, well, yeah, clark, I'm going to need, maybe every two weeks, this amount of output from you. And you get that from six other people and you're like, well dang, I can't do this on my own. That's not possible. So either I need to go change the role and responsibility or I need to make a case that we need to expand this, break this apart, or I tell them cut back your asks. This is not possible at this time.
Speaker 2:But I think the big issue with all of this is because corporate specifically. I think the big issue with all of this is because corporate specifically and this is the thing I hate about corporate this is why I left. Corporate is they're so compartmentalized and inward facing my little team. I got to look after my little team, got to protect them at all costs. Can't let them communicate with other people. They might take our work. They're a bunch of trolls and gnomes living under a bridge protecting their tiny little slice of land. But you get that integration and communication with other teams and other departments and suddenly you start functioning better and understanding the needs and the roadblocks of everyone else. I think, I think you clear the way and you make a path for, for growth for all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. It is certainly what you're saying. It becomes so focused on, rather than the why of the company or the product that we're building. It's more just about my role and responsibilities and not stepping on toes, and so it's like I got to stay in my lane because I don't want to do that when, at the end of the day, it's like well, is that the best thing for the company?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, get out of your lane, because I don't want to do that when, at the end of the day, it's like well, is that the best thing for the company?
Speaker 1:No, no, that's the worst thing for the company. You have to step out of your lane in order to make some disruptive change or be more efficient, or whatever it might be. So, that's what I like about the requirements piece because, rather than just arbitrary statement about what your responsibility is, it makes it, dare I say it, smart, just like those smart goals. They're specific, measurable, they're actionable, they're. What's the r? I don't remember what the r is I don't know.
Speaker 2:I do management by objectives.
Speaker 1:It's so much easier, so much easier I can't remember the r and the t. I'll come back to us, I'm sure at some point in this episode or later on. But yeah, it gives it something to quantify. And then to your point. It gives you something to go talk to other people and, like, set the, the ask to them to say, hey, I'm going to need this from you within this time period to be successful. And then it might point out that that's just not going to be possible and I I think, by tying the outcome to it too, it's even better because it helps you understand how does this make a difference to the company and how does this help us become more efficient.
Speaker 1:So I love that kind of at the end of the grid. I think this is a great way to kind of walk through it, and I think the enlightenment from it is going to be it's going to be a tough pill to swallow. Maybe this is why companies don't do it, and I'm curious on your, your history with corporate Bruce. The outcomes of roles and responsibilities is often going to be we're doing too much, we don't have enough people, or we have too many roles that we don't actually need, and all those lead to hard conversations. We've got to cut scope or say no to customers. You know we we have to slow down and extend our timelines, or we have to cut roles to get rid of some of the fluff and the overhead to actually get things done.
Speaker 2:Those ain't easy. They're not, and I think think the the hard corporate conversation when you're not in a growth phase but you're in. You know what corporations are always. Yeah, you're in a sustained phase, the corporation wants to grow, but you must sustain. The good thing about this exercise is it can actually give you a little bit of insight into your own future. Like, if you do this and you say, huh, I'm not really seeing where I fit in here, or I'm not really seeing where my team fits in here, then it's time to start updating that resume. Yep, if you start having the conversations with the other teams and you're finding that they're not going to work with you or they're already slammed, you're not going to be able to get what you need from them and it's going to impact your velocity, then you need to start identifying. Well, we're not going to be able to continue to get budget to maintain our team of this size if we're not outputting to expectation, like I might have to cut.
Speaker 1:Or going to your manager and be like hey, I'm trying to be successful in my role. In order to do that, I think I'm gonna need X, y and Z from A, b and C people, Yep, and they basically told me they can't do that. So you're resetting that expectation with your manager and ensuring that you're not gonna get blamed for all these things or you not being able to do your role because of outside impacts.
Speaker 2:And that's that's the important thing is you're getting ahead of it, because it's worse when it comes as a total surprise to everybody, like we didn't see this coming. Why are we all getting fired? Well, had you gone through the roles and responsibilities model, identified who you are, who you serve, why you're doing it and building this grid or you know outline, I think you can get ahead of a lot of this and potentially start having conversations with other people to kind of prepare them to do the same and work better with you. I also do an absolute necessity, regardless of corporation size. I mean, you know I did it for myself, but it's corporation size. I mean, you know I did it for myself, but it's. It is truly something that is one of those corporate things that could often be looked at as an eye roll. Find the value in it and it will actually serve you and your team Well.
Speaker 1:I a hundred percent agree. It doesn't have to be perfect either. You know, it's something like you said quick and easy you put together, but it'll open your eyes to all those things. You'll start to see those signs and you may even ask yourself I don't see how I'm providing value and this person is doing this and I'm doing this. One of us probably shouldn't be doing the same thing, so what should I be doing? That's going to be more valuable if I'm not the best at this thing, and so it helps.
Speaker 1:Have those conversations. I agree, I love it. Well, hopefully that helps some of the people listening that may be running into that of hey, I feel like we're stepping on each other's toes a lot, or there's just a lot of swirl. I think doing an exercise like this and making the time for it, which won't be easy, won't be quick. You're going to need a few days to kind of go through this together, maybe in a week or two, but it will hopefully set you up for success or at least give you insight to where things are going and, if there's unwillingness to change, what your next course of action should be.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like this helped you Clark?
Speaker 1:I think so. Now the challenge is how do I make time to do it?
Speaker 2:Is this mandated, or is this something you're just going to do on your own?
Speaker 1:Something I'm thinking about mainly because I can just tell my team is getting inundated with things and in places I feel like they're doing more than they should and they don't have any help, so they're kind of drowning. In other places I just feel like they could be doing more, or people are just stepping into their lane and it's awkward, and so I've been thinking about it a lot and that's why I wanted to bring it here, talk it out with you.
Speaker 2:I love it. I appreciate you doing it, honestly, like couldn't have had better timing. I even thought like we should talk about roles and responsibilities, because I'm doing this right now. But it felt kind of personal. It's like, well, I'm doing it because I want a title elevation, but it's good timing, Clark.
Speaker 1:But hey, if you're a leader, I think that's a very good reason to do it. You know, you should understand what are the roles and responsibilities and the growth of your team.
Speaker 2:If you're not a leader, it's a great way to step up and be and provide leadership. You know, like you could say hey, I think we should do this. I'm willing to take this on you know for the team bring that outline and kind of have that next level conversation. A hundred percent agree.
Speaker 1:I think it's good all around.
Speaker 2:Well, tell us your thoughts. Yeah, very curious. And the way you do that, clark, tell us your thoughts. How do you do it? How?
Speaker 1:do, you do it. It's super easy. You're listening on a device right now. I don't know if it's your computer, I don't know if it's your phone, but you're listening Me Myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah yourself.
Speaker 1:We're talking to the people in the future. But you just got to scroll down. You use your finger Scroll, you can use the mouse Scroll, you can even use the arrow keys scroll. There's a link and it's a tree. It's a link and it's a tree and in that it's going to have a ton of different links on how you can join the discord, I can get to the website, how you can buy us coffee, I can get to our broken store. All good things, and you should follow one or all of them.
Speaker 2:Instructions unclear, scrolled so hard I lost all my thumb skin. Thanks, Clark, I'm suing you.
Speaker 1:You know, if that happens to you, you don't deserve to be part of the Discord.
Speaker 2:Has this ever happened to you? Hey Clark, you know what it's time for. I know what it's time for. I'm ready. I know you are. It's time for what Do you Meme, our little corporate strategy game show. We play every episode where we go to the what Do you Meme channel in our Discord which you now know how to get to with your lack of thumb skin and in that channel we ask our kind, loving community to post memes that we have to then describe with our mouths and respond to. It just so happens to be my week.
Speaker 2:Now yes, yes, indeed, clark's laughing. But what Clark doesn't know is I so happen to be on the fly when it comes to this so bourgeois correspondent Alex Restrepo, posted on July 29th in response to our previous episode, is a man with glasses, tears streaming down his face, mouth open, raging. It's got a title on his title is Clark. He's saying you can't be a social influencer sustainably. He's screaming that. And there's a gentleman he's screaming to this handsome bearded gentleman. He looks Norwegian.
Speaker 2:If I had to take a guess, strong jaw got them Viking vibes. He looks at this screaming, crying Clark man and says give it a riz. Says it right to his face. And what I take away from this is you can think, you can ponder, you can live your life and worry about every little thing out there to the nth degree, but at the end of the day, the dude who made the Skibbity Toilet YouTube series is going to be a millionaire, whether you like it or not. And the children that click on those videos and give him millions of YouTube ad revenue. They're the future and we must protect them at all costs. That's my takeaway from this.
Speaker 1:It was so good, so beautifully said, and I have no idea what you're talking about see, this is why he should have waited.
Speaker 2:He should have waited, I should have given it to you. So this is a youtube thing. Oh, have you not?
Speaker 1:heard of this skibbity. I have never heard of skibbity riz and there was. There was many people in the discord. He said, and one of the other memes from sam was send to the ridge chamber and skibbity his ohio tax. The ph who said and one of the other memes from sam was send to the rich chamber and skibity his ohio tax, the phantom tax, and I have no idea what any of this means.
Speaker 2:So so what you're encountering is gen z lingo. Now, most of these words actually just share a meaning with another existing word, but skibity is the exception here. So skibity toilet is what started as a youtube short series of a toilet that had a man's head pop out of it and sing a little song where he goes like skibbity, bibbity, boobity bop.
Speaker 2:That gained millions of views. So the, the gentleman who made this video, then started making more and they got millions of views and very popular with children, the younger generation. Clark, would you believe me if I told you that this YouTube series has turned into a Marvel, avengers-level quality production where the toilets are fighting giant-headed microphone men fighting boombox men? And would you believe it if I told you that this has been greenlit by Michael Bay for like a million dollar movie franchise?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Dead serious. I'm dead serious. What is?
Speaker 1:our world coming to.
Speaker 2:The skibbity toilet. That's what's coming to our world.
Speaker 1:Should I look this up or should I ignore it?
Speaker 2:If you don't look at what to do. I'm conflicteded, it won't matter because you will see it. Oh, I mean, do you remember when we were kids, like ark and like pokemon came out and it didn't matter where you went, who you were, true, you ran into pikachu and just, everyone knows pikachu. This is, this is the future of the Skivity Toilet. Skivity Toilet is Pikachu for the modern age.
Speaker 1:I hate this with a passion, but I respect the game, I respect the. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:I'm glad, I'm glad and we made it through. I just want to say the difference between Pikachu and the Skivity, because I feel like that was kind of mean to Pikachu. I love Pikachu Like I'm not a Pokemaniac by any means, but Pikachu is a really cleverly designed, colorful little creature, you know, cute. Anyone can look at it and feel good. It's like Hello Kitty. You just feel good when you look at a Pikachu. I don't feel good when I look at a Skibbity Toilet. And that's the difference to me. I'm not trying to dump on the youth's thing and their enjoyment there, but it's just, it's a toilet. You know. It's a toilet with a head in it, that's all.
Speaker 1:Skivvity Riz baby.
Speaker 2:Skivvity Riz. Well, if you made it this far, I'm sorry, me too. You've made it through another episode of Corporate Strategy Podcast. It could have been an email. You know how to engage with us. If you like the show, please share it with your friends. Sharing is caring, as the kids used to say, and sharing this episode with other people is how we grow. We appreciate your listenership and we'd appreciate it even more if you told people you cared about to tune in and listen you even more if you told people you cared about to tune in and listen. You can also send to people you don't care about. The risk with that is we don't want them to give us bad reviews, so do be careful with that. But we thank you, as always, for your listenership and for joining us.
Speaker 2:If you have topics, memes, you want to just hang out and chill with us. We have some really great conversations in our corporate fam. Discord Get in there. We see new people join all the time. They discord get in there. We see new people join all the time. They don't always say who they are or why, but we still love to have you there and we're happy to have you in the conversation. So even if you want to join and lurk, get in there. It's a great place would you agree?
Speaker 1:I 100 agree. It's been. You said in the last episode going through renaissance and I agree, more activity than ever. It's a great time in there, it's a great time it couldn't.
Speaker 2:Couldn't find a better, and the conversations have just been outstanding recently. Good stuff all around. Get in there, you know how to do it. Lose your thumb skin, get in their show notes and that's it for this week. So keep churning the hamster wheel. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We'll see you next week.
