Future-Fit Team Agreements 2: What Works & What Doesn't

Episode 2 of a four-part series.  In this episode, we hear from seven pioneering experts about the specific agreements they find most helpful, some that rarely work, and a few common traps teams encounter after creating their first team agreement.

Episode Resources

• YouTube
• Part 1

Our Guests:

• Bud Caddell, Founder & CEO at Nobl (LinkedIn)
• Chase Warrington, Head of Operations at Doist (LinkedIn)
• Gustavo Razetti, Founder & CEO at Fearless Culture (LinkedIn)
• Gwen Stirling Wilkie, Founder & CEO at Seeds of Transformation, Omni-Working (LinkedIn)
• Jim Benson, Founder & CEO at Modus Institute (LinkedIn)
• Lisette Sutherland, Founder & CEO at Collaboration Superpowers (LinkedIn)
• Mark Kilby, Founder K5 Labs and Differability (LinkedIn)

To learn more about this podcat, visit:
Labs.newrulesforwork.com

Transcript

Elise Keith: 0:00

Interesting. Okay? So let's talk about the contents of these agreements. So you've been working with all kinds of teams over time. What what should an agreement contain? There are all kinds of things you could agree on what's most universally useful in your experience.

Chase Warrington: 1:38

In our case at Doist, being explicitly clear about our communication standards has been incredibly beneficial. We have [10 guiding principles of communication that concisely summarize how we prefer to communicate with each other, and which underscore how we work together. such as transparency, intentionality, radical candor, and having a bias for action, are all key aspects of how we communicate, and therefore, how we move work forward as a collective of 100 people spread across the globe. 

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 2:12

I think the first one and I'm laughing because it's probably in some respects it unpacks so much of the others. And that's about meetings. you know. And yeah. you know. And yeah. you know. And yeah. you know. And yeah.

Elise Keith: 2:26

So.

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 2:29

And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. And I just think there is so much nested within that word meeting, and for some people internally they just go. Oh, God! And for other people. They get really energized by going to meetings, so of course, they then want more of them, and they're often driven by our own personal preferences as to how much we want to bring people together. To meet. So so meetings absolutely is, is is always for me top of the list. So so meetings absolutely is, is is always for me top of the list.

Elise Keith: 2:48

What are some of the specific agreements that you see people finding most universally useful.

Lisette Sutherland: 2:50

It's always so. The ones well, I don't know if it's the most useful, but it's the one where everybody starts is one is the communication agreements. because everybody is so overloaded, and we all have such strong preferences for how we like to communicate. So you know, you quickly find out, who's a Whatsapp person versus an email person versus a phone person. And each of those methods is really different. So you know, Mike, like my husband's just like, just pick up the phone and call. And I hate calling. I'll do anything like I'll find the hairdresser where you don't need to call, you know, like I'll do anything to not call for. No, I don't understand why, but he's just like he'll just call anybody, you know. So so communication is is always one where I start. But could you say the question one more time.

Elise Keith: 3:35

The agreements that you find most universally useful, like, like, pretty much every team really does need to figure this one out. And and and then it ends up mattering that they did that had that conversation and came to that agreement.

Gustavo Razzetti: 3:50

in how we communicate the basic about when we use email or slack or text message. And blah, that kind of basic rule, because many teams are having like hundreds of a a ways of communicating, and they start communication on slack. They didn't send a message via zoom. And then they continue an email. And then that creates a lot of confusion and overlaps, but also anxiety, because some people are expecting like response to come faster than they should, or that's possible. So for me, that's the basically something that happens in all teams. And we need to clarify how we communicate with each other.

Mark Kilby: 4:25

for me, it it's it's really around respect. does do the different team members respect each other in a in a professional way. And with that do they? Do. They allow everyone an equal voice that's usually the one that I find needs to be set every voice can be heard. And with that, there might be different techniques that we we grab on to to make sure that happens. So whether we're time boxing like we do in a leave coffee or do something else to make sure that we're we're. We're round going round, Robin, and getting the other voices in that. That's that's one approach some more innovative approaches I've I've heard is the loudest voice goes last. and and so I've I've seen in some groups where they know who the loudest voice is, or speaks the most often. And and they have a work agreement. Where? Okay, we're, we're going to reverse the order who usually goes first. But that requires a great deal of respect, and turning the ego knock down a little bit. So

Elise Keith: 5:25

And and and then it ends up mattering that they did that had that conversation and came to that agreement.

Lisette Sutherland: 5:25

Yeah, one is. It's always around communication. There's so much tension. It's always communic. So in my experience, communication and I mean, like, for instance, on my team I was driving to hear a crazy when we first started working together because she responds to emails instantly, like, I don't know how she does it, but I do it twice a day, and so I. She was getting responses hours later. and I would get them instantly. So I'm happy, and she was very unhappy. So we have to really agree on like, okay, response. Times are going to be like this.

Elise Keith: 5:57

Right.

Lisette Sutherland: 5:57

So the those small annoyances. they drive people crazy.

Elise Keith: 6:03

I remember learning response times from you and response times is by far, you know, platform plus response time, like, what goes where and when can you expect a response on a in a distributed working environment? Makes such a huge difference for getting in front of bad assumptions.

Lisette Sutherland: 6:24

Totally in one of the things that got highlighted for me was when I interviewed the Astronaut last January. Paul Richards cause I wanted to talk about like space, you know, remote from space. But Paul said, that the astronauts really do train to have the right information at the right place at the right time, which sounds really easy to say, but when you really start to think about it. he says that they train so much on their interpersonal communication that they don't need verbal communication anymore. It's like with, you know, with your partner. You can tell at a glance what they're thinking, just because you know them so well. You know they don't have to say anything you're like. Oh, I know exactly what's going on in that head. And so he says that astronaut train like to be able to do that with each other so that they're that close, that. And I was thinking, you know, teams don't really need to train to be that close knit. But we do need to train to be somewhat close knit, and that actually, there is a training that's needed in order to be close knit. I mean, call it training. Call it whatever there it's attention.

Elise Keith: 7:24

Right.

Lisette Sutherland: 7:25

That's needed in order to be close knit. So that's I really liked what he said with that, with the team agreement that that's sort of just sealed the deal for me.

Bud - NOBL: 7:33

Yeah, so we normally one, we focus a lot on rituals, because I.

Elise Keith: 7:38

I mean, just.

Bud - NOBL: 7:39

Fundamentally believe, like rituals will hold. I'll we'll hold you, and we'll like, make up for a lot of other shortcomings. So if you can create rituals for decision making, for how you plan the work, how you reflect on the work and how you work on it together, like that's one we've been introducing more lately, like, let's have a standing jam time. It seems so obvious, but it's so, especially the world we live in now. It's so important to have like time just for collaboration. So rituals is one big thing. and then we will pay attention to. You know there'll be some more traditional working agreements in terms of like we will work in the open is a big one for. That we make work visible in some way, and it's it's always clear what people are working on that. You know. We'll obviously we'll keep commitments right? If, like, as if we follow some form of sprint planning, we're gonna try our best to keep the commitments we make, and if we don't. We're gonna reflect on why they're is the agreement to invite dissent into their so.

Elise Keith: 8:48

Huh!

Bud - NOBL: 8:48

Right? That's really important. Us, especially for a new team. Just have that explicit permission to say like, and that can be I'm gonna wear the devil's advocate hat right now, whatever that needs to be, to make it as safe in that culture to experiment in those ways and to invite feedback. So not just be okay with feedback to actually like, look for it

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 9:07

Things like that which can just slow us all down. And then I think the other area for me is is how we collaborate. You know how we make some choices about collaboration. When when do we? What is it that's gonna drive us to physically come together to collaborate versus, you know, and I'm I'm probably back touching on synchronous and asynchronous again, and and all of the tools and the platforms. So a lot of these are kind of nested into each other rather than being completely separate. And then I think the other one for me is is then our. I guess, our relational approach. So this is this is about our sense of connection with each other, our level of trust, our level of psychological safety, which for me is the I don't know is the is the kind of the the spirit and the glue, and everything that sort of swirls around all of these things of communication and meetings and synchronous and asynchronous working and and and tech platforms is, what level of relationship do we have with each other, and how trusted and supported do I feel, and how safe enough do I feel to be able to, you know, share where I need help with something.

Elise Keith: 10:26

Well, and it and it implies, of course. Yeah, I I I think you're saying that train teams need to train to be that close knit which means that they need a basis upon which to train right? It can't be. We just spend a lot of time together, and then, therefore, we become close knit, because you're not actually marrying these people and planning to live with them for a decade.

Lisette Sutherland: 10:44

Right.

Elise Keith: 10:44

Which which is what we get with our partners. You know.

Lisette Sutherland: 10:48

Right? And and we can't spend the time together and like, what kind of close knit do we want for our team like is functioning. Okay? Or do people really want to be friends? Right? Like, everybody, has a different need. And some people want to be friends, and some people are like the opposite. It makes them cringe to think about like all that. Yeah, they still want the friendships. They don't need it.

Elise Keith: 11:09

Right, but their life is their social life is not their work. Life.

Lisette Sutherland: 11:14

Totally. And to make them do things is, Yeah.

Elise Keith: 11:18

Actually there was a conversation with Bud from Noble about that. You know, we were talking about the team teams that come together and ask everybody to, you know, share 2 things about their childhood, and you know all of this kind of stuff, and how just both inappropriate. And. you know. like capitalizing on potentially traumatic memories for people as a way of team bonding is just such an awful, awful, inappropriate thing to do.

Lisette Sutherland: 11:54

Yeah, I mean, people mean well, I mean, that's why I have to be like they mean, well.

Elise Keith: 11:57

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. They. They want to connect.

Lisette Sutherland: 11:59

But.

Elise Keith: 12:00

So you as a person and and.

Lisette Sutherland: 12:02

Yeah, but how about? Let's start with favorite food.

Elise Keith: 12:05

It is.

Lisette Sutherland: 12:05

Like a little less dramatic. Yeah, indeed.

Elise Keith: 12:08

8. Yeah. yeah, so I really appreciate that. I actually, this is the the first conversation I've had where we've talked about, you know work can, in fact, just be about work and being clear. It doesn't mean that you don't try to be pleasant. And and you know, nice and have a warm relationship with your colleagues, but you don't have to be friends, but you do have to communicate. Well.

Lisette Sutherland: 12:37

Totally and actually, Chase has the best quote on this, that I use it in every single workshop and presentation. And he says, a team culture is based on how you work together, not how you socialize together. And I'm like, yes, a hundred percent, because it's not. It's not about the pizza parties and the quiz nights like those are fun. But it doesn't mean you're gonna work well together like it just means you're gonna have pizza and quiz nights together. But like actually working well together means that it's like a well oiled machine that you're not annoyed that you're not waiting for information that there's one source of truth that there's a clear goal like that matters so much more than any old pizza party. And actually, what I hear in my workshops all the time is like the last thing anybody wants at the end of a long week is some virtual quiz night with your team right like it sounds like a nightmare. I'm I'm in the camp of like. Don't need the team building stuff like as much as it seems like I would like that. But I I have no need. I have no.

Elise Keith: 13:36

Aha!

Lisette Sutherland: 13:38

Sit alone in my office all day. Be fine with that.

Elise Keith: 13:42

Well, and and that some of the best team building stuff is is micro right. It's Hey, we're in a call, and we are working through our priorities list, and we've taken the list and we've organized it. And then we've broken into teams and we're working on it together. And we've solved a problem. and in the form of so.

Lisette Sutherland: 14:03

More exciting. Yeah.

Elise Keith: 14:04

Working and solving that problem. We're getting things done. I get to know you. You know.

Lisette Sutherland: 14:09

We've had a few laughs.

Elise Keith: 14:11

Exactly.

Lisette Sutherland: 14:11

Kids yeah.

Elise Keith: 14:12

You know. Maybe there was a joke. Maybe there was a reference to your dog who knows right but that we treat each other as people doing work, and and all of a sudden, heck! You know each other. How cool is that.

Lisette Sutherland: 14:23

Yeah.

Jim Benson: 14:24

Okay, Jim, the the famous screen share price you lasted this long. So. So I will answer that question by telling a story of 2 young women named Amanda and Savannah. who were in construction in New York. And they we're working with with me and other people. And they decided that they needed a con bond to manage their work in estimation in their part of estimation at the company, and this is obviously a very. It's a not only a white male world, but an old white male world. So they were. It was very, very easy to marginalize these 2, these 2 young women. and so they set up their first board in this room on this wall, and it had a bunch of post it notes, and then people would come into the very small conference room, and they'd leave with about half the board attached to their backs and butt. Then they said, Oh, that's not working. So they took the posted notes down and they changed to dry, erase marker on the windows, and then people came in, and then they would erase the wall with their backs and butt so then they went to wet erase markers which you see here today in this redacted image. What happened was these 2 young women said, well, we're gonna set this board up. And then we're going to have a huddle every day, and we're going to talk about what's going on, so that we can actually learn from each other for the first time in all of the history of of our group. And everybody called this their room. They called it their board, and so what they started to do was figure out how to socialize the ownership of the team working agreement. Right? So one of the first things that they did not not by me. Where is it? There it is. Is they set up their own team working agreement. I was gone. I did not tell them to do this. But they but they came in basically and said, We're gonna come in. We're gonna have these meetings every morning. The, it's it's not gonna last very long. We're and we're going to talk about things. And then, when we're talking about the things that are happening on the board. if things go too long. We're going to put them in the parking lot, and then we're gonna hold a lean coffee after the part after the after the meeting, and whoever wants to stick around Ken. But if you're too busy, go! And at the beginning everybody went. except for the people who had written something on the board and over time, and by time I mean maybe 3 weeks. Everyone started to stick around for the lean coffee because it was so useful. So what made this working agreement stick was that they made the working agreement work. They made it visual. They looked at it every day it was tangible. The work was tangible. The work had a place. the work had an identity. So there was standard work built into the team working agreement, and where I see team working agreements fail is they say we're gonna talk more often, or we're gonna you know, have stand-up meetings. We're gonna and those things fall apart because they don't have the standard work and the physical work around them to make to give them substance over style.

Elise Keith: 17:55

Yeah.

Jim Benson: 17:56

yeah, that is my story.

Elise Keith: 17:58

So being extra clear is so great. What? What? What agreements have you found. Like, as you started working with, this seemed like a good idea. right? But they become the kind of thing that yeah. Maybe the team talked about it that one time, but then they put it on the shelf, and they never looked at it again.

Gustavo Razzetti: 18:15

A for me decision making. Steams are not clear how they make decisions. So one of the questions that we asked people is, How do you make decisions as a team. And first I asked them to write it on their own. So we can compare notes and working from executive teams to cross functional teams. Whatever. 95% of the times. People are not on the same page when it comes to making decisions. basically at some point disagree, but then commit and move forward.

Elise Keith: 18:42

I found that. Not only do people not know how they're making decisions, they don't know what their options might be right like they don't. They don't know the different formats for decision making. and sometimes they don't know when their need to make a decision. Do you? Do you find that like.

Gustavo Razzetti: 19:02

Totally, totally.

Elise Keith: 19:04

Yeah.

Gustavo Razzetti: 19:04

I think that the lack of clarity first is, they don't spend enough time into defining, deciding how they're going to decide. Second, a misconception. So everyone has a different understanding, because it's based mostly on what they want, on their personal preferences rather than a discussion. And third to your point, people are not unclear about the different decision making methods. So if you know, I mean, I like cooking. If you don't know I've been worried if and you didn't feel so. Ingredients are all about. Then you're never gonna come up with a nice dish.

Elise Keith: 19:37

Right? Right?

Chase Warrington: 19:38

Generally speaking, I find the following types of agreements fall short

of their intended goals: 19:46

and attempt to police every aspect of everyone’s workday. 2. Those that fail to leave space for the human side of work, such as building personal relationships beyond “the office” and encouraging serendipitous conversation. serendipitous conversation.

Elise Keith: 19:59

handle into the same session. What are some other challenges or or issues you've seen of people who've tried to do it well, and then not.

Bud - NOBL: 20:06

I think you know anytime that there's an effort to codify how we work in an organization. I just assume that there are impediments to codifying that honestly and accurately in the first attempts there's I usually assume. Even if it's a new team they still imbibe unless they're completely new to the organization. They've imbibed some of the water and the rest of the culture. So we just assume there's probably a lack of psychological safety, or we just can't assume there is psychological safety in that room until we start to see it. So we don't hold tight. We have to be very careful what we hold tightly to in that first charter. And how much we really wanna create in there? Assuming again that, like, maybe the things the group fixated on, we're just the safest things to talk about in that space.

Elise Keith: 20:57

Right.

Bud - NOBL: 20:58

Actually have little impact on helping the team achieve a higher level of performance. So there's that like this is, it has to be the first step of many, and like also observing the team and getting a sense of how they work together. there's that like this is, it has to be the first step of many, and like also observing the team and getting a sense of how they work together. Doing in retrospectives is so critical. And not just because you're gonna glean learnings. But you're gonna watch how they treat that space right and like, who speaks and who who seems comfortable, speaking that tells us a lot about it. yeah. And then I think the one of the things that is very difficult to understand is like no team stands alone. Other teams that are affecting this team that you're working with and plenty of times we have gone through some sort of like team improvement process for shared services teams in particular, so it could be like a marketing function. and they will create a team charter inside their own castle, where basically everything adds up to everyone else. Here is a jerk. Protect our work without understanding, you know, and we had. There's a remarkable Cmo. We worked with who he saw his team chartering like that, and stopped the meeting and said. without those internal partners, there's no role for us inside the organization like.

Elise Keith: 22:10

Right.

Bud - NOBL: 22:11

And he's like, have we earned the right to show up like this for our partners? And I like, I thought that was a great intervention moment. And essentially what we had to do with that team.

Gustavo Razzetti: 22:15

Yes, yeah. And on the other hand, meetings is another element, a. I know it's your expertise. One of the things that's important is, many tech teams have been training an azure method. But now what I encounter, I mean, yes, they was having a couple of works with a large organization, no names mentioned. And now they're following the cadence because they have to. But they're realizing that the cadence it's not the one they need. And in most of the cases. They're just having a stand up meeting or a meeting for whatever, and the meeting doesn't serve them. But they just follow a protocol versus. And and so to your point. we want to qualify or clarify what we don't have, but also a team agreements help a revisit, and even challenge the agreements that maybe 3 years ago, 2 years ago, were great, but but now they no longer serve the team. So we need to adjust them.

Elise Keith: 22:58

you know. Practice is that if you take. like your books, my books, anybody's books on how to do things. do reflect really great ideas and really base best practices in general. Right? Because we're looking across large, large groups of people and many organizations. That doesn't mean you should pick up anything that we say and apply it specifically verbatim. right? Right? So. I love that. I love that. This practice gives people a chance to pay attention to what actually matters in their world. you know, here are, here are 4 probes. Yeah, yeah.

Bud - NOBL: 23:36

Exactly. And sometimes really so, I mean, like, we were working with an organization who was all about empower teams and wanted to really change the culture that way. and we're struggling because I think they were. They just bought a dogma off the shelf. And they're like, how do we become this and they're really fixated on that. But when we got into the questions of like, Okay, who are we talking about? Acting differently? In what way? And, like one of the keystone behaviors, were, well, we want execs to stop dictating product roadmaps like, so what would be necessary to make that possible? And that really becomes that illuminates all the work in a different way than, okay, we need these sets of rituals because the scale framework tells us. So we need to do. Yeah, you know, XY, and Z. But it's like what would need to be put in place to build the trust and the process in place, so that execs didn't need to show up and be like, can we talk about coupons? We should add coupons to the product.

Elise Keith: 24:34

Right? Right? what are some agreements that end up, not particularly working well. And then how do teams kind of live and evolve them?

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 24:36

I think there's something that I always want to warn teams about.

Elise Keith: 24:43

Is geek.

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 24:43

Once you are introducing new habits and and new behaviors. It isn't all gonna happen overnight. We're human, you know. We might forget we might get it wrong. You know unexpected things happen. So I kind of encourage people to just, you know. believe that the spirit of the intent is there, and that people intentionally guessing it wrong. But it might take 2 or 3 iterations of something before people. Remember, you know, I was working with a with a a manager, and he had just got a newly enlarged team. And he said, I'm gonna have to just really rethink how I run my meetings because I've got far more people than I ever had before, and what I've done before isn't gonna work. And so he really changed the cadence of his meetings and the focus of his meetings. So for some meetings, they were very much kind of you know, we're focusing on how we are delivering right now, and and the kind of the daily day tactical operational challenges that we're facing, and then every so often, maybe monthly and certainly quarterly. Then we're stepping back and being much more strategic. And so he really changed the cadence of his meetings and the focus of his meetings. So for some meetings, they were very much kind of you know, we're focusing on how we are delivering right now, and and the kind of the daily day tactical operational challenges that we're facing, and then every so often, maybe monthly and certainly quarterly. Then we're stepping back and being much more strategic. Now, in order to be able to do this, and the intent was was that he was wanting to free up the time for his team to then focus on their team because they were saying, we just don't have time to do all the things that we need to do with our teams as well. He required them to make 2 big changes of behavior about how they turned up ready for what I call active participation.

Elise Keith: 26:02

Meeting.

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 26:03

And so that was, you know, there were asynchronous updates sent out. You know, things, something for them to watch, something for them, to perhaps prepare some questions for them to think about, so that when they turned up to these meetings they had done some pre-thinking, and they were ready for active participation. Now it took the first time he did it he phoned me up and he went. I'm so frustrated. Nobody had prepared.

Elise Keith: 26:10

Right.

Gwen Stirling Wilkie: 26:11

It's like, okay. So you know, we talked about it. And he's kind of knows I'm I just want to give it. It's not all happening. It's not happening. So just be patient, just be patient. You're asking for a big shift. you know. And then the second, the second time he was kind of like, okay, well, 2 or 3 of them did. And then the third time a few more did. And then. And now he's like, right. We've made that shift. but it didn't happen overnight, so there's something about expectations being patient and and encouraging, you know, rather than punishing.

Elise Keith: 26:42

Right right? adopt clarity in their ways of working.

Bud - NOBL: 26:43

Well, I mean, across teams, too. It's really we just for a client. Recently, they were thinking about like, Okay, how do we? And it fell into sort of hybrid work and remote work. And how do we engage folks successfully across all these teams? Because what they've landed on the problem is, they have individual teams that work really well on their own, but they have this incredibly disjointed experience as an organization, and they're missing timelines because of it, and like not.

Elise Keith: 27:09

Right.

Bud - NOBL: 27:09

Being key product launch dates. And again, this isn't a new idea. This is like taken from like scrum scrums and things like that. But we're like, let's just make Wednesday afternoons the like open, transparent team planning sessions so like teams are expected to show up and share what they're working on, and what their dependencies for others are, and their blockers and things like that. And we'll design that around like Wednesday afternoons. And again, it's, I think another challenge is just

Elise Keith: 27:34

That's cool, that's cool. I I know a couple of folks who do agile transformations and things like that, and they they go in with that promise of, hey? We're gonna reduce your your schedule time on your calendar and free you up, and you'll hit all your things, and they find that sometimes you actually end up adding more of those structured collaborations. Which doesn't necessarily help you impress the client by having checked off that box on your sow.

Bud - NOBL: 28:02

No, we tell, but.

Elise Keith: 28:03

I.

Bud - NOBL: 28:04

It's the goal.

Elise Keith: 28:04

Hold on! Right.

Bud - NOBL: 28:06

Short term like, that's the first thing we admit to like. We're gonna add more time to your calendar. It's gonna feel a crunch. and then a lot of times, too. You're running this like an old process and a new process at the same time. And that's important to know. And also, like we've measured enough through our engagements that we know, like through any change of transformation, you're gonna have an engagement hit. You're gonna have a belonging hit in the first 30 to 45 days, but, like you have to. you have to listen, but also continue through it, and you'll start to see improvements, and you'll start to decide how to prioritize. You just don't know in the beginning how exactly to prioritize, like what to kill, what to cancel.

Elise Keith: 28:41

Right.

Bud - NOBL: 28:42

Still making sense of what you're trying to accomplish together.

Jim Benson: 28:45

and seeing that work in construction is oh, especially in New York. was was an incredible joy because you had groups of people who had been just beating the crap out of each other for 120 solid years, and when they would come in and they would do collaborative meetings where they would work through things. I'm trying to find one more image here. yeah. I saw like 60 year old. completely. Buff almost made of nothing but calluses. Guys cry because somebody was helping them get their work done it it it was in. It's so intense to watch people actually get permission to care about each other. And that's just it's something that given the current political climate, everybody's kind of fallen away from again. But it is it it? It is what keeps me going. It's what keeps me coming back to work every day is just a promise that that will happen again someday